


Connie Swap Future

by br42



Series: Connie Swap [41]
Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Art, Author Notes, Epilogue, F/F, F/M, Gen, Momswap, Pictures, Romance, Slice of Life, Steven Universe AU, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-18
Updated: 2020-04-08
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:08:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 26,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23195275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/br42/pseuds/br42
Summary: Connie Swap is over but here's some vignettes of what might have come next as well as essays on potential character and plot arcs.
Relationships: Amethyst & Pearl (Steven Universe), Amethyst (Steven Universe) & Original Character(s), Bismuth & Crystal Gems (Steven Universe), Bismuth (Steven Universe) & Original Character(s), Connie Maheswaran & Pearl, Connie Maheswaran & Priyanka Maheswaran, Connie Maheswaran & Steven Universe, Connie Maheswaran/Steven Universe, Crystal Gems & Connie Maheswaran, Doug Maheswaran/Priyanka Maheswaran, Greg Universe/Original Female Character(s), Jasper & Lapis Lazuli & Peridot (Steven Universe), Jasper & Lapis Lazuli (Steven Universe), Jasper & Peridot (Steven Universe), Jasper/Pearl (Steven Universe), Lapis Lazuli & Peridot (Steven Universe), Lapis Lazuli/Peridot (Steven Universe)
Series: Connie Swap [41]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/630527
Comments: 61
Kudos: 68





	1. Welcome Back For the First Time

**Author's Note:**

> Hi there. So, Connie Swap is over but there were a lot of ideas cooked up before my co-creators and I decided when we were actually going to end things. Which left a lot of neat stuff lying on the other side of the final episode and I want to share a lot of those goodies with you all here.
> 
> Now, I should stress that the scenes and essays presented here are my own. I'm grabbing my recollection of future story ideas and marrying that with my own inventions for what a hypothetical Episode 41 and beyond of Connie Swap would contain. Like the [Lost Episode](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10673391/chapters/28268220) omake, this is the br42 edition of things, no more and no less.
> 
> However, as the Omake Collection is proof, I hate to throw anything away and I really wanted to share some of the ideas I had in store for Connie, Steven, Lapis, Jasper, Peridot, Bismuth, Pearl, Amethyst, P2, and the rest of the cast. This is going to have a trio of vignettes --actual scenes I've written for this collection-- and then a number of character- and plot-specific chapters outlining my ideas. Oh, also some unused story beats from the fic proper --where plans zigged but the story itself zagged as we made our way to Ep40-- as well as some unused art.
> 
> Consider this a bundle of author's notes and a little cherry to go on top of the Connie Swap sundae. I hope you enjoy it.

P2 wasn't the first Mended to ride the elevator up from the Cluster- No, from Terra's cavern below the mantle. The first had been a giant: mostly Moissanite but with sparkles of Topaz-yellow visible too. She had the same thin, gold filigree around her shards as Terra had, meaning that the Mended were literally carefully assembled pieces of Terra turned loose as individuals. 

She had thanked the gathered Crystal Gems --though for what, exactly, she didn't specify-- then turned and strode unerringly for the ocean. The waves calmed at her approach, she disappeared beneath the water, and that was the last anyone had heard from her so far.

Lapis had gone down to check on her once or twice since but said she'd marched all the way to the sunken ruins of the Lunar Sea Spire and was now just kind of hanging out.

The second Mended was an amalgam of so many shards --her body a riot of colors like the scintillating wings of some exotic butterfly-- no one really knew what she was, including the gem herself. She demanded in an imperious tone that she be conveyed to White Diamond's court immediately and, when it was revealed that there wasn't really any way to get to Homeworld from Earth right now, she had stalked off, 'To find my own means of return.'

She showed up at the Beach House about once a month to demand a ride but, other than a single incident involving her having to be escorted off of a NASA launch site, she'd been almost a non-entity.

The third was a broad-shouldered Mended made out of roughly equal parts Amethyst, Jasper, and Carnelian. She'd loudly announced herself as 'Kwartz the Magnificent' then immediately launched herself at Jasper. Mom, with the help of probably a thousand or more feet of rusted rebar, managed to entangle the exuberant brawler and pry her away from the orange warrior.

"Just a tussle," graveled Jasper, not bothering to hide her grin.

It eventually came out that Kwartz wanted nothing more than to brawl against worthy opponents. After it came out that she had no interest in harming 'puny organics' and would refrain from damaging 'the delicate buildings they cowered within', the gem was set free.

She and Jasper spent much of the next several days sparring (as Jasper called it), eventually the latter talking Kwartz the Magnificent into accompanying her on a patrol. The fact that there were monstrous corrupted gems loose on Earth had come as a revelation to Kwartz and they'd seen very little of the Mended since. Judging from what Mom saw in the warp logs, Kwartz was quite possibly the first gem on Earth to patrol more often than Jasper did and the bubbled gemstones appearing in the quarry were proof that she wasn't having a boring time of it.

The fourth time Connie's phone had chimed with the automatic alert that the quarry elevator was rising, however, had been different.

P2 stepped carefully down the short flight of stairs set in front of the elevator opening. She didn't look at Connie or Steven or Pearl, instead taking in the sight of the world around her.

Steven was the first to step forward. "Hey," he said gently, a welcoming smile visible under uncertain eyes. "We're really glad to see you again." He fidgeted, starting to sign with his hands before catching himself. "Do- Do you remember us?"

P2 blinked, finally focusing on the trio in front of her. A familiar grin, the one that had featured in so many of the photos in the funereal collage Steven and Pearl had made, split her face and Connie felt a knot of tension in her chest loosen a little. "Yes, Steven, I remember you. And Connie and Pearl as well." She looked around. "Is Amethyst nearby?"

Connie cleared her throat. "I've healed a lot of corrupted gems, including a bunch of former Quartz Pack members." _Thirty-one, to be exact, though considering how many there were still to go-_ But Connie shut that line of thought down hard. "She's been taking them out on hikes and stuff to help jog their memory and get used to modern-day Earth."

"She's become our de facto instructor for cured gems," added Pearl, a measure of pride audible in her voice. Things were rather... tense between Pearl and Amethyst these days, but given how quickly they jumped to the defense or praise of the other it was clear they still cared for one another beneath the friction.

After the first time Amethyst punched a cured Quartz through a wall after calling Pearl an ornament, that fact was made _crystal clear_.

"What do you want to do now that you're back, P2?" asked Connie, feeling decidedly out of her depth. She knew intellectually that it was an emotional curveball for gems like Lapis and Jasper to have shattered and corrupted compatriots brought back. All of those gems, though, were new to Connie. But she’d been there for P2's wake. She'd given a eulogy of sorts and eaten several sugary treats in her memory. Seeing her here, restored but changed, had the part of her that had grieved the gem deeply confused.

The mottled gem opened her mouth to speak then paused, as if trying to hear something faint. "P2," she said slowly, as if tasting the name. Then she slowly shook her head and said, "That doesn't sound right."

Pearl clasped her hands in front of her and offered a slight bow. "With apologies, but this-" The gem paused, straightened up, and shot Connie an apologetic glance. She'd been getting a little better about some of her more servile mannerisms --with a lot of help from Connie, Steven, and Jasper-- but it was still an ongoing process for the gem. Clearing her throat, she said instead, "Would you prefer to be called by Peridot Facet-2B2Y Cut-5XG again?"

The mottled Mended shook her head. "No. Most but not all of my constituent shards are from that gemstone. The rest, however, come from Nephrite Facet-5O1R Cut-F7Y." She seemed puzzled by this new quandary.

Everyone shared a glance, no one sure how to answer that until Steven said in a hesitant voice, "What about... P3?"

The Mended blinked, staring off into the distance. Then a smile like a sunrise spread across her features and she beamed at her welcoming committee. "Yes! I like that very much!"

That broke the ice. Smiling in answer, Connie asked, "Do you want to go get some donuts?" the girl already mentally rehearsing what she'd say if Lars gave the back-but-not, new-but-not P3 any grief when she was surprised to see the mottled gem shake her head.

"Actually, it is my sworn duty to establish lines of communication between my Diamond and the rebels of Earth," answered the Mended gem solemnly, gesturing at the insignia on her jumpsuit: a yellow diamond encircled in pink with stylized golden 'cracks' running throughout. A beat and then she added, "Unwavering loyalty to Yellow Diamond is something P2 and Nephrite Facet-5O1R Cut-F7Y had in common pre-shattering."

Connie scratched the back of her head, looking a little sheepish. "Um, well, Homeworld got the message you broadcast to them, then they sent an armada, then Terra kind of scared them off, and we haven't heard anything since."

"Also, Miss Bismuth stole one of their ships," added Steven.

"Yeah, that too," agreed Connie.

P3 pondered this for a minute, the Mended rubbing her chin in thought. "I see," she drawled eventually. "Then I have a second objective of great urgency."

"What is it?" asked Pearl, the gem looking a little fearful, as if another Homeworld armada might be summoned before too long.

Walking with the familiar energetic, almost hopping gait P2 had had when excited (which was often), P3 said as she approached the others, "I very much want to test the boundaries of a lifetime ban."

* * *

"Weee!" cried P3, enjoying her sixth consecutive ride on the airplane-themed Tilt-A-Whirl.

P2 had received a lifetime ban from the Beach City Funland amusement park before being shattered. Mr. Smiley had stared long and hard, first at P3 then at the polaroid of P2 he had pinned to his 'Banned For Life' board. Several tense seconds later he had taken her (actually Connie's) money and welcomed her to the amusement park.

Pearl had never been banned and was welcomed without so much as a second glance. And while Connie had been banned more than a year ago, Asmi was greeted without hesitation... though they'd been forced to shell out for an adult pass after their remark of being 'Fifteenish' was received with a long and skeptical stare from the frowning Smiley.

Asmi had had to bow out after ride number three on the Tilt-A-Whirl because injury transfer powers apparently weren't any help for weapons-grade dizziness. Pearl had ridden once to be polite then waited, she and Asmi heading out after to go fetch snacks.

P3 staggered off the ride, smiling. "Yes! G-force!" she shouted to the sky, arms upthrust. "Again!"

Before she could scamper over to the line for the ride once more, Asmi and Pearl intercepted. Munching on fair food, Asmi hastily wiped their mouth on a napkin then said, "P3, wait. We got you your favorite: sugar!"

With a pleased smile, Pearl offered the mottled gem a fluffy pink-and-blue bundle of cotton candy. Asmi watched with anticipation, their components having once seen P2 _literally_ inhale cotton candy after first being exposed to it. To call her a fan would be hugely understating it.

However, after a couple of excited bites, P3's enthusiasm seemed to wane.

"You don't enjoy it?" asked Pearl, starting to bow and then catching herself.

P3's eyes went unfocused as she searched her feelings. "It's delicious but..." A pregnant pause and then, "It's missing something." Then she blinked, gaze honing in on Asmi, or more specifically Asmi's funnel cake. "What _is that?"_

The fried confection was piled high with powdered sugar and a drizzling of chocolate because, for fifty percent of Asmi, this was a forbidden pleasure. The fusion looked at it, then at P3, then said, "It's a funnel cake. Would you like to try it?"

P3 practically snapped the treat out of Asmi's offering hand, attacking the dessert with gusto. Face powdered with sugar, chocolate mottling her already mottled skin, P3 crunched contentedly, eyes closed in gustatorial bliss as a pleased noise escaped her.

"You like it?" asked Pearl, seemingly torn between being glad at P3's pleasure and dismayed at the mess being made.

"It's delightful," murmured P3. "It's sweet, yes, but the texture is exquisite! Isn't this-" and she broke off a piece of funnel cake with a long 'crunch', "-the most wonderful sound?" She then popped the piece in her mouth and chewed it with obvious satisfaction.

"Huh," muttered Asmi while Pearl retrieved a pack of wet wipes from her gemstone. "I guess you like crunchy things now. Oh! Hang on, I know where they're selling caramel-coated popcorn!" and the fusion sprinted down a lane, weaving between the other parkgoers.

Like a fencer vying for an opening, Pearl wiped and dabbed at P3's face between the Mended's bites of powdery, crunchy goodness, the technician paying the mid-snack tidying no mind.

"I have to wonder," said Pearl philosophically, squeegeeing chocolate from a mottled cheek, "what else about your preferences have changed?"

Then P3 gasped, the funnel cake dropping completely from her hands as she gawked in open-mouthed wonder.

Pearl cast the gem and funnel cake a disapproving glance before craning her head skyward to follow P3's gaze. A plane was flying overhead, a banner being pulled behind it that read, 'This election: vote 4 Dewey'.

In a soft, wonder-filled voice, P3 asked, "Can I ride that next?"

Pearl opened her mouth to answer when a rumbling emerged from the Mended's midsection. A look of mottled confusion was swiftly replaced with one of excitement as P3's eyes lit up. "Yes! My first opportunity to experience a complete digestive tract."

Pearl leapt back as if bitten. "What?!"

P3 rocked in excitement. "In addition to having my gemstone reconstituted, I had to design a new form as well. Previously I had only a mouth, esophagus, and stomach, but now I have it all!"

Another rumble sounded from the gem's midsection. P3 looked up at Pearl questioningly, the pale gem recoiling further and saying in a scandalized voice, "Don't ask me!"

Then P3 spotted Asmi approaching and she bounded after the fusion. "Asmi! I have an urgent question which requires your expertise!"

For a minute Pearl stood there like someone who'd narrowly avoided being attacked by a wild animal, arms raised in fright, one leg off the ground. Slowly she relaxed, summoning dustpan and broom to tidy away the dropped funnel cake. Disposing of it in a nearby trash can, she returned the cleaning supplies to her gemstone and set off to catch up with the retreating pair… if, perhaps, not too quickly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> P3's model was drawn by BurdenKing.
> 
> Like in Peedee's _Lutes and Loot_ campaign, Connie Swap doesn't have a way to resurrect the deceased. However, a form of reincarnation is available given the win our heroes managed to pull off.


	2. Revolutionary Bismuth

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you don't recognize Moonstone and Sunstone, they're from the 100% canon omake [Escape From Homeworld](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10673391/chapters/33132777), which takes place around the events of Ep26 in the main fic.

The Breakaway, formerly the Sun Incinerator, docked with the 'abandoned' mining station. Out the view screen, Bismuth saw the moon the station orbited --a strip-mined husk of fractured rock-- but it was the gas giant the moon was circling that dominated the display: a swirling maelstrom of yellow and purple clouds, any useful materials buried deep below caustic weather and an especially deep gravity well.

"I'd hate to have to raise a spire on that ball of gas," quipped the smith, jabbing a thumb at the screen.

Topaz and Topaz, unfused for the moment, each looked up from their consoles. Not big conversationalists, those two, so they offered nothing more than a pair of nods in response. Moonstone, meanwhile, was silent, the pale blue gem's attention anywhere but on the bridge. She was also slowly drifting upwards, the tiny gem eye-height with Bismuth and inching toward the ceiling.

Swallowing a chuckle, Bismuth walked over and gently guided the figure back down into her seat. Then, leaving the seer to her seering, the smith reached forward and pressed a button on Moonstone's console. "Is our guest ready?" she asked.

A couple seconds later the comm answered with an outraged voice in the background --"-have your shards used to line the promenade so that my boots trample them each time I exit my quarters!"-- while a calmer voice in the foreground said, "Yeah. Restraints are in place." A beat, and then, "Should I gag her too?"

Some more pretty creative threats were shouted from Plume Agate in the background before Sunstone asked over the comm in a pleading tone, "Please?"

Bismuth chuckled. "Go ahead, Sunny. I'll be down there after we know more about what's going on inside-"

Moonstone, already starting to hover out of her seat once more, stirred. "They're all gathered in the main hall, arguing," said the tiny gem in a high and clear voice. "I counted three hundred-and-twelve gems. Six are holding destabilizers: Sodalite and her enforcers, though Beryl has a hidden one in her pocket. There are sixty-two Era-1s but Novaculite-" and the gem's name came out in a high-pitched snarl, the word dripping venom.

Bismuth raised an eyebrow at that but didn't interrupt; something to ask her two newest recruits about later.

Moonstone continued. "-is the only one that has summoned a weapon. Spinel has something in her hand, a magenta cylinder with a button on it, but I don't know what it is."

The tiny gem looked up to Bismuth, her eyes obscured by a curtain of blue bangs. The smith had to resist the urge to ruffle the clairvoyant’s hair, instead saying with a broad grin, "Good job, Moony." Then, leaning a little closer to the console, Bismuth said to her muscle downstairs, "Grab Plume Agate and meet me at the ramp. It's time to go make some new friends."

* * *

Plume Agate squirmed on the cart Sunstone was pushing, the gem having to share space with two mid-sized crates as well.

Bismuth glanced down and smiled at the sight of it -- satisfaction like smoothing out mortar welling up inside of her, only instead of building a wall she was building an army.

"Take a right at the hallway ahead, then the second left through the large doors," said Moony, her voice coming out of the communicators Bismuth and Sunny wore. "Also, you have a smudge on your cheek, Sunstone."

Sunny smiled and reached up --"No, the other cheek," offered the clairvoyant-- wiping away the grit she’d gotten on her. "Thanks, Moonstone."

"I want my sunshine to look good for the other rebels," answered the pair's comms.

From the cart, Plume Agate rolled her eyes and offered some sort of gag-muffled epithet until Sunstone cut her off by 'accidentally' steering the cart against the wall.

A month ago Bismuth had gone looking for Yellow Diamond's top Agate. But what she'd found when she stepped off the Breakaway was Moonstone waiting for her. The little fugitive had guided Bismuth around every checkpoint, past every obstacle, to where Plume Agate was asking Sunstone some very pointed questions with the help of some very pointed tools. That Sunny was none too delicate now didn't surprise Bismuth in the slightest.

As they approached the big double doors, their comms piped up, "Two of Sodalite's enforcers are flanking the entrance, just on the other side."

"On it. Thanks for the tip, my little moonbeam." Sunstone sped up, gem and cart getting ahead of Bismuth. Moving at a quick clip, Sunny rammed the main hall entrance -- Plume Agate having to squirm to keep from getting struck herself..

The large, heavy doors swung inward and crashed into the pair waiting to ambush them. Bismuth's grin was wide enough to be load-bearing just then: Sunny couldn't see across space but she had more than endeared herself to the smith since joining her crew.

The room was large, with high ceilings and the husks of old ore smelting equipment shoved to the corners. The walls and ceiling were faint shades of yellow, denoting who's station this had been before it'd been abandoned. Though large, there wasn't room enough for so many gems to stand comfortably and yet despite that there was a wide circle of open space near the doors, the crowd having retreated back and pressed in on itself.

Bismuth strode in to see three-hundred and twelve rebels staring back at her. Well, three-hundred and ten judging from the moans she was hearing from the floor to either side. Several faces in the crowd lit up with recognition on seeing her --mostly grins though a few pensive frowns too-- but most just stared with nervous expressions.

"Hi there," said the smith with an easy grin as Sunny pushed the cart into the center of the room. Bismuth’s voice was pitched to carry though you could hear a pin drop just then. "I heard there were a bunch of hard-stoned rebels out here, gals ready to bring down an unjust hierarchy right on top of the heads of the tyrants who built it."

A beat and then Spinel, the pink gem having stretched her legs to loom over even the tallest in the crowd, said in a razzy voice, "Naaaw! We're just having a party." She accentuated her point by throwing a handful of confetti into the air. "Woo!"

Bismuth's grin widened. "Well I just happened to bring some party favors," and she shot a wink at the crowd.

Sunny stooped down and removed the gag then chucked Plume Agate out into the room. The captive glared daggers for a beat before twisting around and railing at the assembled gems. "These deplorables have assaulted an Agate appointed by Yellow Diamond herself. You will free me and subdue them. And then each and every one of you will submit yourselves for inquiry. This _gathering_ is not Diamond-sanctioned!"

There were a few hushed and fearful whispers from the crowd before it was cut through by Spinel going, "Booo! That's not a party favor, it’s a party pooper," and she ended on a loud raspberry.

"No, but this is," and Bismuth strode forward, unlatching her Breaking Point from its holster. With practiced ease she got the weapon into place and loomed over the snarling Agate. "You were one of Yellow Diamond's top enforcers, the sector administrator who had shattered or embedded more dissidents than any other."

Plume Agate glared at her malevolently, not a speck of contrition there. "And I'll be adding you and this _rabble_ to my tally before the cycle is-"

The smith punched and the shattering sound that followed was music to her ears.

Bismuth rose and swept her smiling face across the gathering, arms spread wide. "This gem was our enemy. And now she's dust." Bismuth paced, treading casually over Agate shards as she went. "She would have fought us to the bitter end, poofed, embedded, or shattered everyone in this room, everyone in this _sector_ if it meant staying in power. There's no justification there beyond, 'Because I say so,' no promise other than the whip and the boot. Right and wrong don't matter to tyrants, only control. They take this control because they're powerful and they keep this control because they scare everyone else into line."

Bismuth reached the end of the room, turned, and paced back, a faint trail of shard fragments marking her wake. "But _we_ are powerful too. And _we_ are not afraid. And I promise you this: if you fight with me, if you work to tear down the twisted power structure the Diamonds have built, then they will be afraid."

At this point Sunny opened the first of the crates, tipping it over so that a multitude of Breaking Points spilled across the floor.

"They will fear you down to the very core of their stone. We are not just a rebellion, we are a revolution! We will liberate our fellow gems and show that the Diamonds may need us, but we don't need them!" and Bismuth ended with her Breaking Point thrust overhead.

About half the room cheered, gems surging forward to shake her hand or snatch up one of the weapons for themselves. About half the room --most of these gems wearing some shade of pink-- recoiled, putting as much space between them and the Breaking Points as possible. The remainder moved to one side, Spinel standing at the fore of that group.

Hands enlarged to comedic proportions, Spinel slow-clapped. "You brought toys," she cooed, "and they make their own confetti." She gestured down at the trampled Agate fragments. "But there's something I want more than toys," she said, walking with a bouncing gait until only a few paces remained between them.

"What's that?" asked Bismuth.

The sweet and silly look was gone from the pink gem's face in an instant, broad teeth visible as she snarled, "Revenge!"

A beat later and the gem was her old, lackadaisical self, walking over with squeaking steps and leaning casually against Bismuth's shoulder, legs stretched up so they were the same height. "Does the end of your rainbow-" and she flicked one of Bismuth's colorful dreads, "-end with a pot of Citrine shards?"

Bismuth took a step back. "You don't have to worry about her anymore. None of the rebels on Earth are our enemy."

Spinel made a razzy noise like a buzzer. "Errrrt! Wrong answer!" She started to walk back toward her group along the opposite wall. "If Citrine doesn't pay then I don't play." She didn't turn her body but she swiveled her head around, the neck stretching out so her face was only a foot away from Bismuth's. "And so I say-" and her hand stretched back to give a cheeky salute, her voice pitching up into something child-like. "-Good day."

Head snapping back into place and voice dropping into a lower register, she finished in a razzy voice, "Later losers!" Perhaps one fifth of the rebels present turned and left when she walked out of the room.

Bismuth turned to face the mostly-pink faction that had remained apart. Stares ranging from fearful to disgusted met her gaze. A tall Amethyst was evidently the group's spokesperson, taking a half-step forward and saying, "Rose's coup would have been shardless. Yours isn't a cycle old and you've already shattered a gem."

The smith shook her head. "Your general had gem fragments on her hands, same as me. She was just better about lying about it. Her coup would have become the same tyranny as the Diamonds’ but with a pink coat of paint."

"You're the liar!" shouted one gem. "Rose would never!" jeered another. The rest just glowered at her before the group turned and filed out.

That stole a little of Bismuth's momentum but then an Era-1 Carnelian slapped her on the shoulder while brandishing the Breaking Point on her other arm. "Where were these during the war, right?" she asked with a toothy grin.

Bismuth met her smile with her own, the glow of pride back in an instant. "Tell me about it," she said to her fellow revolutionary.

The crowd around the weapon cache was boisterous and Sunny was busy handing out Breaking Points as quickly as she could... which made it conspicuous when she stopped suddenly and glared, saying in a sharp voice, "You had better keep on walking."

Bismuth had been helping a Jasper adjust the straps of her weapon when she heard that. Glancing up she recognized Novaculite, or Nova as the warp pad technician had been called during the rebellion of Earth.

Sunny's comm crackled and then the high-pitched voice of Moony cut in. "I'm watching you, you lying piece of coprolite."

Several gems looked questioningly at Nova, prompting the grey gem to throw her hands up in a nonthreatening gesture and back away. After a quick glance around, she turned and jogged after the retreating contingent of pink. "Hey, wait up!" she called before vanishing out of sight.

_Yeah, definitely something to ask about later,_ Bismuth thought… before she allowed herself to return to the teeming group of revolutionaries surrounding her: each one eager to take up arms against their oppressors, to remove the Diamonds’ boot from the collective neck of their entire people. It was a sight as beautiful as a perfect arch or a flawlessly-crafted sword, but while those were only things, this was a _movement_.

Which was why it was particularly strange that she felt something chipping at her stone. It was only when was walking back to the Breakaway for another crate of armaments that she recognized what it was.

> _In Bismuth I saw another Rose. And like Rose, she had the capacity to split the Rebellion once more. She was well-loved and the promise of her Breaking Points would appeal to many, for war is hard on mind and body and to some, any peace was worth it, even if it was littered with the remains of fellow gems._
> 
> _The Rebellion couldn't survive a second Schism; it had hardly survived the one._

Yellow had written that about Bismuth in her journal. Bismuth had read the words back on Earth but hadn't thought of them since she'd left the planet behind.

With a shake of her head, Bismuth dismissed the thought. Who cared what Citrine wrote: she had rebels to arm and battles to plan. She had to stoke the flames of revolution hot enough to burn down an entire, corrupt empire.

Those Diamonds weren't going to shatter themselves, after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll include more about how Bismuth's revolution would have gone in a subsequent chapter. However, I have one more vignette to post first: this one about Connie struggling with the fact that there's an entire planet of corrupted gems waiting to be cured and only one of her. I had planned on posting all three vignettes at the same time, but, boy, has it been a crazy couple of weeks. I'm leaving my old job this week, starting a new job next week, and traveling a couple hundred miles over the weekend between them. Plus that whole pandemic thing going on.
> 
> So that vignette will go up by next Wednesday, March 25th... if not sooner. And that should be followed by a steady stream of character- and plot-specific chapters describing what else I had in mind. Those won't be vignettes, more like outlines/informal story notes, but they'll also come out pretty quickly because --as my co-creators and some of the folks over on the CS Discord can attest-- that's exactly the sort of wall of text I'm adept at dropping on folks.
> 
> I'll see y'all in the chapters to come here in a couple of days.


	3. Quis Medico Ipsae Medicae?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That title is meant to be a riff on _Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?_ , a Latin phrase meaning, "Who watches the watchmen?" Thanks to WritingToMusic for helping me with the latin for that phrase (unlike Priyanka, my own Latin skills are grounded in Google Translate and it rather showed).

The Sanctuary had been destroyed, taking the chilling aura of calm with it. Connie had tried to cure the corruption of a gem without it --roiling heat came off the dog-like Ruby as it gnawed on the bars of its cage of Era-1 super-metal-- but she'd had to give up after two frustrating hours of futility.

If what she was doing with her CP power was akin to cutting someone’s hair then that was like trying to do so while the person in the seat was actively struggling the entire time: it'd either take ten times as long while wearing both parties out, or worse, it'd mean mistakes made and possibly someone getting hurt.

Mom and Bismuth had managed to salvage some of the components from the Sanctuary's wreckage. Contrary to Connie's YA novel-based expectations, these weren't exotic artifacts forged by bygone ancients, nor did the mechanisms require special crystals from some far-flung star. The Sanctuary had been built during the Rebellion by rebels, after all. However, it was time-consuming and exacting work, and Bismuth was all too eager to depart Earth to make contact with Rose's now-leaderless pocket of Homeworld rebels. Which was why the pair had been able to use the salvage to make a platform on Mask Island that was effectively a miniature Sanctuary.

Seeing as the platform was ten feet wide and ten feet across, it was a _very_ miniature Sanctuary indeed.

Connie sat on a folding chair, her body rested and restored as only hours spent insubstantial could make it. And at the same time she was _so weary._ It was a gem-deep ache, a pervasive sense of being tapped out that was as indescribable as it was undeniable.

Robinson, her robonoid helper for this particular session, chirped as it toggled off Track Purple from Connie's phone.

"Thanks," she murmured, able to do little other than stare blankly into the (admittedly quite gorgeous) distance, the light from the sunny afternoon reflecting off the island's many geodes and the picturesque ocean beyond.

There was an answering beep from Robinson and then the robonoid scuttled over to the platform, a stubby limb tapping at a number pad that would be for Connie at ankle-height.

With a click and a whoosh, the barred door swung open and Ocean Jasper stepped cautiously toward the exit to the cage she'd spent the last --Connie glanced at her phone timer-- eleven hours and fifty-eight minutes confined within. "I don't think I'm supposed to be here," said Ocean Jasper, taking care not to trod on Robinson as she exited the enclosure.

"The cage is there to keep you from wandering outside the calming aura," explained Connie in an apologetic if exhausted tone. "Not because you're a prisoner. It's okay."

Ocean Jasper --light blue but mottled with dark blue and pink splotches, a pair of horns unevenly piercing the top of her thick mane of white hair-- gestured with a large hand at Mask Island around them. "No, I mean here, in this place. It's elites-only... right?" It was possible she was blinking with confusion but the gem's eyes were obscured by her unruly, white bangs. It reminded Connie a little of Sapphire, actually.

"It's fine," sighed Connie. Then she gestured to the nearby edge of the forest, several geodes visible below the canopy of leaves and dimly reflecting the sunlight. "Robinson will lead you to a bench near a warp pad. Wait there and Amethyst or Biggs should arrive in-"

She looked up at Robinson, who had scurried over to Connie's phone so it could piggyback off its carrier signal to send out a message. Amethyst's phone was routinely uncharged --the Quartz apparently liked to use it to binge-watch classic cartoons during the rare times it had power-- so in practice the message would be received by Biggs. Still, she and Amethyst were together more often than not. Robinson recognized her unspoken question and rapped against the folding chair's aluminum leg three times.

"-Thirty minutes," finished the girl. "They'll explain things."

Ocean Jasper looked like she was going to say more but Robinson, who had scuttled ahead in the direction of the warp pad, came back just as quickly and prodded the cured Quartz in the shin, adding an insistent chirp for good measure. Ocean Jasper swallowed her remark and followed her diminutive guide, the sounds of robonoid scampering and heavy Quartz footfalls fading into the distance.

Connie sat in her folding chair and sighed. She was staring into the distance but her attention was really turned inward. She wasn't hungry or tired despite her last meal or nap having been some time ago. She wasn't achy or stiff even though she'd been standing in place for hours on end while meticulously scouring corruption from a mindscape thrice over. She knew without needing to look that there was a trio of bubbles floating overhead.

 _Come on,_ a corner of her insisted. _One more and then I go home._

 _Ocean Jasper was my second today,_ came the answering retort from another corner. _Or was she the third? I've cured so many Quartzes lately, they're all starting to run together._

 _Well... so what? I've done five before. That was Memorial Day weekend, remember?_ replied the first corner.

 _Yes, but it takes longer when I do them in a row like that. This one took nearly twelve hours,_ was the second corner's answer.

 _It's not like I'm going to need a nap or a bathroom break if I keep going,_ chided the first.

_But-_

The first corner interrupted the second. _But this is a life, a living person warped to the very core of their being, locked in confused agony for millennia and then confined to bubble stasis. What could I possibly be doing that is more important than_ saving someone?

The resigned inner silence that followed was answer enough.

Connie glanced at her phone, noticing the time (mid-afternoon), then nodding to herself. "Yeah," she said with a mote of, if not enthusiasm then at least acceptance. "One more." She gestured down the next bubble --a Carnelian-- and started to walk toward the open cage. It was meticulous, exhausting, time-consuming work, but it was undeniably _good_. Doing good deeds and being willing to work hard were two of the main qualities for any heroine worth the name so even if this wasn't particularly enjoyable use of her weekend, Connie could still feel proud of herself for doing it.

Popping the bubble, she set the ruddy gemstone inside the cage and shut the door. By the time the corrupted Quartz began to reform, she started her phone's timer, turned on Track Black, and reached out with that indefinable sense of hers.

* * *

Robinson applied the vial's contents with the special applicator (a small squirt gun) and the Carnelian shifted shape, a monstrous form becoming a humanoid one. Less than a year ago that sight would have represented one of the greatest triumphs in attempting to undo the damage the Diamonds had wrought on Earth. As it was, Connie didn't even notice it, the girl instead studying the fractal vista visible in her mind's eye.

Her second sweep of the ‘scape complete (and too drained to muster the energy for a third), she relaxed her power and tore her gaze away from the colorful vista. Still insubstantial, she saw the sun rising over a beautiful tropical landscape, a ruddy gem staring at the world around her in awe.

Connie couldn't find it in her to care, mind numb as she collapsed into her folding chair.

The sensations of the world returned and for a beat Connie could do nothing, think of nothing, everything around her passing without notice. All she could do was sit.

_Bebeep-bebeep-bebeep_

Seconds later something tugged at the edge of Connie's awareness.

_Bebeep-bebeep-bebeep_

Slowly Connie turned her head and stared in the direction of the noise, brows furrowing as she tried to kickstart her wool-wrapped mind into processing the sight before her.

_Bebeep-bebeep-bebeep_

Oh, her phone alarm was going off. That explained the noise.

_Bebeep-be-_

The Carnelian said something from the cage but Connie ignored it as she looked at her phone, expression puzzled. The display said it was Monday. When had it become Monday? And her alarm was set to go off an hour before school started. It'd been ringing for nearly twenty minutes while she'd been insubstantial so that meant...

Connie jolted, her mental blanket of gem-fatigue pierced as she scrambled to get out of her folding chair.

"Hey. Hey, uh, person. I'm in a cage for some reason and I don't-" said the Carnelian, waving through the bars to get Connie's attention.

Connie jammed her phone in her pocket, grabbed her backpack by the little loop-shaped grip on the top, and nearly tumbled as she tried to swing her pack onto her shoulders while running toward the warp pad. Calling over her shoulder she shouted in a rush, "HiSorryIHaveToGoOrI'mGoingToBeLateForSchoolRobinsonWillLetYouOutAndAmethystOrSomeoneWillComeGetYouBye!"

Connie was half-gem but half-human too: after more than a decade doing the opposite, she was trying to focus on that human side these days. Which was why when the Universe family had been getting ready to transition from summer break to the fall semester, she'd decided to attend actual students-in-classrooms-with-teachers high school, the same as Steven and Jeff and every other teenager in Beach City. It was a decision that Connie stood by as the right one (no matter Mom's vocal disapproval or Pearl's quiet dismay) but that meant class hours that weren't scheduled around Crystal Gem business.

The second the warp pad flared with light Connie grimaced. She'd planned to finish the rest of her homework over Sunday night and here it was Monday morning.

At least showing up to high school with incomplete assignments was also a very fourteen-year-old human thing to do.

* * *

\--A Few Weeks Later--

Priyanka was sitting in her chair, sipping her tea and skimming a medical journal. Technically it was Doug's chair but she'd been using it as her main reading spot in his apartment for more than a year now and she'd effectively claimed it through squatter's rights.

There was a click, the sound of the knob twisting, and then the door was shoved roughly open. For a split-second Priyanka was worried it was Jasper barreling her way into Doug's home for some no-doubt dramatic reason. True, the gruff alien hadn't done that in a long time --Pearl's influence had helped to smooth some of Jasper's rough corners-- but Priyanka had never quite gotten over the old incidents.

Which was why the doctor was alternately surprised and relieved when it was a dark-skinned teenager instead of an orange warrior that came staggering through.

With a faintly dazed expression, Connie dropped her backpack inside the entryway, then tried to nudge the door closed but it remained slightly ajar after pushing the pack a few inches across the floor. Either not noticing or not caring, Connie then walked zombie-like over to the dinner table and collapsed into one of the chairs. The girl stared off into the middle distance and as far as Priyanka could tell, she hadn't actually noticed that anyone else was present in the apartment with her.

Priyanka took a second to assess the situation. Connie looked to be unharmed and in good health. Her cheeks weren't flushed and there were no bags under her eyes, so it probably wasn't physical exertion or lack of sleep. Sickness wasn't really a concern given someone with Connie's... curious physiology. It was late Sunday morning and Connie had come shuffling in with her school pack, so maybe she was dreading schoolwork?

Still, after the expected adjustment period, the girl had proven herself to be a prodigious student, quickly rising to the upper ranks among the Beach City sophomore class. If anything, Priyanka had worried the small town's high school wasn't adequately challenging Connie academically, all of which left the doctor with no ready explanation for the bleary-eyed teenager before her.

Lowering the medical journal to her lap and carefully setting her mug on the end table beside her chair, Priyanka said in a friendly voice, "Hello Connie. How are you?"

Gaze lowering from where she'd been studying the ceiling, Connie looked at Priyanka and blinked, confused. She took in the rest of the apartment as if wondering where she was. "Did I miss brunch?" She fished her phone out of her pocket and squinted at the display despite Priyanka knowing for a fact that the girl wasn't farsighted. "It's Sunday, right? Where's Dad?"

Priyanka's eyes narrowed slightly. A part of her balked at even the notion that Connie might be experimenting with drugs, but a good doctor dismissed nothing prematurely. Nor a good mother. Speaking in a calm voice, Priyanka answered the girl's questions in order. "You didn't miss brunch: Doug and I weren't planning on leaving for the restaurant for another half hour. Yes, it's Sunday and your father just stepped out to run a short errand. He should be back soon." Then, leaning forward slightly and with a hint of worry lines at the corners of her eyes, she asked, "Connie... Are you okay?"

At first the girl nodded, anxiously chewing the inside of her cheek. "Yeah," she said quickly. Then she paused, shoulders slumping, and her head lolled back until she was once more staring at the ceiling. A sigh and then, "Not really."

Setting her journal aside, Priyanka straightened in her chair, expression growing intent. "What's the matter?"

Several seconds ticked by, Priyanka waiting calmly for her patient to respond like the examination room veteran that she was.

"It's been nearly nine months since I learned how to cure corruption," said the girl in a weary voice. "That's almost thirty-six weeks." Raising her head, Connie looked at Priyanka, the girl growing visibly distressed. "Today I cured my sixty-first gem. That means I'm averaging less than two a week. There are thousands of corrupted gems on Earth. This year's two-thirds over and I haven't even finished half of all the gems in the _Quartz Pack!"_ a hysterical edge entering her voice by the end.

Before Priyanka could respond, the girl slumped back into her seat, eyes once more on the ceiling. "I'm saving lives but all I feel is... tired. Tired and-" Her voice grew confused (along with a note of self-reproach), "And resentful."

Priyanka rose from her seat and walked closer, looking down at the girl with concerned eyes as Connie looked back with a pained expression.

"Does that make me a bad person?" the teen asked, a hint of moisture at the corner of her eyes and a faint tremor in her voice.

Repressing the urge to draw in and then release a deep breath, Priyanka pulled a free seat from the dinner table over and sat directly across from the girl. She kept her expression calm: she'd offer comfort soon enough but a question like that coming from a girl like Connie first demanded an answer.

"How involved is delivering this treatment for you personally?" asked the doctor matter-of-factly.

Connie's eyes narrowed in question. "Um, very?" She straightened up in her seat a little. "I mean, I just stand there so it's not physically exhausting. Actually the opposite of exhausting since I'm insubstantial while I do it so when I'm done I'm actually more rested than when I started."

"But?" prompted Priyanka.

"But," answered Connie with a sigh, "I have to go over every inch of the gem's mindscape. Three times, actually: once for each Diamond responsible for corruption."

The actual things Connie was describing --Mindscapes, corruption, magical diamond-aliens-- were about as far removed from Priyanka's experience as it was possible to be, but the underlying concept wasn't.

"And how long does this procedure take on average for you personally?" probed the doctor.

Connie stared over Priyanka's head as she did some mental arithmetic. "About eleven hours, I guess?" her voice squeaking up into a question at the end. "The first one I can usually get done in ten hours. Once it barely took nine. But it gets slower with the second and third. And fourth."

It was hard for Priyanka not to openly frown at that but that might put Connie off: teenagers, like patients, tended to clam up when they thought they were in trouble. Instead, in a measured tone, she asked, "How exacting would you rate this work is for you? Are there consequences for mistakes?"

"Very exacting," answered the girl quickly. "If there's even a single piece of corruption left, it'll spread and reinfect the gem. If I catch it quickly enough, or if they stay inside the cage-" 

And Priyanka made a point not to ask why there had to be a _cage_ involved in something a fourteen-year-old had done sixty-one times and counting.

"-then it's not that bad. But if I don't I imagine it'd be super traumatic to relapse like that." Connie reached up and rubbed the back of her neck. "Plus, even though Pearl had this big stockpile of Rose tears, they're still super valuable and I'm wasting a dose every time I mess up. I can't cure gems without it so every time I mess up, that's one person who I won't be able to save. They'll have to stay an emotionally-tormented and confused monster for the rest of their life which, for a gem, is pretty much forever." A beat later, the girl added in a pained voice, "And that's how they are now --put in stasis as a mercy because the alternative is perpetual anguish-- and I think about curing more next week and my entire body tenses up and I just want to do anything else and how can I think that and not be a horrible person inside?"

Priyanka did allow herself that deep inhale and exhale just then, more to quell her own rising emotions than anything else. To think that this had been going on for months and she never noticed it. "The concise answer to your question is, no, you're not a bad person," answered Priyanka in a calm, even clinical tone. "What you're describing is burnout. It's a response to repeated, stressful situations with too little variety and too few breaks. Especially when the work is tedious and without an apparent end in sight."

_Connie has done this sixty-one times while concurrently maintaining a high GPA?!_

The teen gave Priyanka a searching look, the girl suspicious of being let off the hook so easily. Priyanka could sympathize: she was guilty of doing the same from time to time as evidenced by how Doug had to chide her sometimes for 'refusing to take a compliment.'

"No offense intended," Connie said diplomatically, "but curing corruption is eldritch as gem magic goes. It's out-there even for the other Crystal Gems."

 _So how are you an authority on this in any way, shape, or form?_ the girl implied but was too polite to say out loud.

"You're right that I don't know the first thing about magic," conceded Priyanka. "So I'm not speaking from first hand experience like I would if we were talking about, say, the lymphatic system. However, I _am_ a surgeon and what you're describing in terms of effort, stakes, and the personal toll it exacts on you sounds very much like surgery."

Connie stared at her, eyes gradually widening as an epiphany washed over her. When it seemed like the girl wasn't going to say anything just yet, Priyanka continued.

"There is a global shortage of trained medical professions of almost every type and specialization. There are more patients needing to be seen than there are doctors to see them and so there is a risk in my profession for us to... push ourselves. To work a few more hours. To take fewer days off." There was a reason the hospital had mandated leave absent disasters or pandemics, after all. "It can mean an increase in malpractice rates. It can cause a doctor to dehumanize their patients: they're not a person, just another problem you have to solve before you can finish your shift. And-" Priyanka reached out to rest a hand on Connie's knee, her tone gentle, "-it can mean resentment even though you're a kind person, even though you're doing good."

Connie met her gaze and for a moment there was shared understanding, even appreciation. Then the moment passed and the girl hung her head low.

"Even so, I can't stop," mumbled the teen. "If you work too hard and burn out, even if you were the only surgeon in all of Crossroads, eventually another doctor could take your place. There's no one else in the entire world who can cure these gems. If I don't do it it just... doesn't get done."

The wall clock behind Priyanka ticked in somber silence, the doctor considering the (admittedly novel) circumstances surrounding Connie's... _extracurricular_ activities. Connie, meanwhile, sat there looking like she was slowly being compacted under the weight of the responsibilities resting on her narrow shoulders.

"In medical school, I had this anatomy professor who was as strict and no-nonsense as they came. He always walked through the doors with a briefcase in hand precisely in time for the start of class. He’d set his briefcase down, retrieve his notes, and deliver a fifty minute lecture from his lectern. Then he’d spend five minutes for questions, five minutes to assign homework, then he’d pack his briefcase and leave precisely sixty minutes after he'd arrived." She absently shook her head. "He was always dressed like he was on his way to a funeral. I swear the man was carved from oak for all the flexibility he had regarding late assignments or missed lectures."

Connie gave her a skeptical look. "You turned in homework late?" A beat. _"You_ missed class?"

For a moment, Priyanka was almost defensive, her long-dormant (but still prickly) academic pride rearing its head. Then she caught herself and rolled her eyes where Connie would see it. "You might think a doctor would be forgiving of students taking sick days. You might think that... but you'd be wrong."

That earned a brief smile from Connie, Priyanka returning it with a slight grin of her own before continuing her talk, her voice and expression growing somber. "So you can imagine our surprise when we entered class near the end of the semester to find him already there, no briefcase, sitting on the edge of his desk and staring at the floor. No one said anything --we were too unnerved-- so the class was utterly silent for five of the longest minutes of my life. And then he looked up at us, his stern demeanor gone, and he delivered a lecture that I can remember more vividly than any other he gave."

Connie sat there, staring up at Priyanka and hanging on her every word.

"He said that human misery was an ocean, as broad and deep as the Pacific. He said that as doctors we'd be taking a bucket to that ocean day in and day out. And no matter what, even if every one of us in the room spent forty years working at it, we'd never reach the bottom. It wasn't possible and we'd drown if we tried," said Priyanka, unconsciously running her thumb in a figure eight pattern over Connie's knee in the same way she'd done for Anjan back when he'd been a youth in need of comforting.

"Then he said that even though the sick and injured were numberless, that didn't change the impact of what we were doing on the people we treated. Every person was someone's spouse, someone’s sibling, parent, grandparent, child, or friend. If they were in pain, it weighed on everyone around them. If they died, others grieved. And if a family spending Harvest Festival around a dinner table instead of a casket didn't matter, he said, then nothing did."

Like the Priyanka of so many years ago had done in that lecture hall, Connie sat there in silence, letting the message sink in. Then, slowly, she leaned forward and pulled Priyanka into a hug.

The wall clock ticked away and the hug continued. Then the partially-ajar door swung silently open and Doug peeked his head in, pausing in the entryway when he saw the tableau.

 _Five minutes_ , mouthed Priyanka and Doug nodded, gingerly pulling the door shut behind him, twisting the knob before it closed so that there wasn't a click to disturb the silence.

Connie mumbled something, Priyanka wasn't sure what precisely, but the tone was thankful so that was how Priyanka received it.

"Maybe later today you and I can look at some literature together."

The girl pulled back and quirked her head questioningly at the doctor. "For what?"

With a warm smile, Priyanka said, "As mentioned before, doctors are in short supply and our time is expensive besides. So agencies like the AMA have spent considerable effort in finding ways to streamline surgical procedures, reducing steps and finding ways to delegate to less specialized personnel when possible. The same principles should apply for what you're doing even if it wasn't written with magic in mind."

"Like how?" pressed the girl.

Priyanka shrugged. "Is there anything that needs to happen that doesn't absolutely have to be done by you? If so, could you involve someone else who does that for you? As you said, you are the most limited resource involved so anything that can be done to minimize your involvement is a significant gain."

Connie squinted, thinking. "I guess someone else could get the gems in and out of the cage. Oh, and sometimes I have to go substantial to reposition my phone if the audio isn't being heard right by the gem. I could get the robonoids to do that last one for me since each interruption that makes me go substantial usually costs me five or more minutes."

The doctor nodded, continuing to brainstorm. "Some of the surgeries I perform are done in stages. You mentioned needing to perform the same procedure three times over, but if you didn't have to do each in immediate succession, you might find it easier to fit the work into your schedule; say, two or three hours in an evening rather than ten hours across an entire day. And there could be gains in doing the same procedure on two or more patients back-to-back rather than doing all the work for one patient and then moving onto the next."

Expression growing a little distant, Connie stared into space as the gears in her head whirled. "Yeah, if Mom set up permanent speakers playing one of the tracks on repeat instead of just using my phone, that color of corruption would stay in remission while I was gone. And-" The girl actually gasped. "-I mean, I _can_ see and influence multiple 'scapes at the same time, it's just normally I can't do anything detailed, like using a paint roller instead of a brush. That's why my mother could cause an entire enemy flank to panic during the war. But if I could scrub most of, say, the white corruption from multiple gems at the same time, even if I have to go back over them individually to do the detailed work, that could be _enormous!"_

The look of hope on the girl's face was more warming to Priyanka than her first cup of coffee on a December morning. Seeing the cloud of despair parting, she decided to take this opportunity to propel the family toward brunch, because the only thing teens needed more than guidance was calories. Connie rambled excitedly on, speaking more for her own benefit than Priyanka's, allowing herself to be led.

To say all that magical talk was Latin to Priyanka would have been understating it because they taught that language in medical school given the sheer amount of Latin-influenced terminology saturating the discipline. But she could tell she'd helped Connie that morning and, to paraphrase her strict anatomy professor, even if Priyanka would never be able to drain the ocean of magical craziness that was a part of Connie's life, she had made a small difference for the girl this day and that mattered anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was the last vignette I had planned. It's not covering anything as substantial as P2 coming back or Bismuth lighting the fires of Homeworld revolution, but it was a subject and a character interaction I really wanted to depict in long-form... What can I say? I'm a sucker for Connie and Priyanka scenes.
> 
> And, yes, Connie going to high school with Steven, Jeff, and Peedee. Let that mental image sink in for a minute. (＠＾◡＾)
> 
> There are more chapters coming but they'll be outlines, notes, and short-form descriptions of character and story beats I had in mind. I'm still debating whether these'll go up in a batch on Wednesday or go up bit-by-bit over the week as I write them. I've started a new job so I'm still figuring out what my schedule looks like these days (on top of the whole pandemic upheaval going on concurrently), which has made planning my writing difficult.
> 
> Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this. Later! [waves]


	4. Setting and Character Overviews

## Setting Overview

I've said before that Ep40 was meant to be a pivot point, a place where the scope and emphasis of the Connie Swap narrative shifted, with old, long-standing plotlines resolved and a bevy of new ones emerging to fill the void. The next sweep of the narrative would have been what I call the 'A Tale of Two Homeworlds' plot (AToTH for short), with lots of constituent arcs contained therein.

The crux of AToTH is focusing on the changing face of Earth and Homeworld, both socially and politically. The Earth is no longer an embarrassing bywater to be forgotten by the Diamonds: Terra makes the Earth unassailable; P2's broadcast, Emerald's failed invasion, and Rose's capture means that Earth is known to all of Homeworld space. It’s the talk of gems both high and low in the hierarchy.

Now, there would have been a TON of smaller-scale, character-specific subplots and personal arcs as well, but for right now I'm going to talk about the large, macro-scale plots. That's part of that Ep40 pivot, after all: a change from focusing solely on the personal and the Earth-centric and broadening the scope to extend beyond just the Earth and the Crystal Gems.

On Earth, there's three main upheavals: the steady influx of Mended and Cured gems (who are collectively called The Restored), Peridot's Era-3 tech taking root, and the sudden, nonviolent attention of Homeworld. 

To that first one, suddenly the Crystal Gems aren't the only gems on the planet. There are new gems helping contain corrupted gems (e.g. Kwartz the Magnificent), new gems helping maintain the old ruins, and a whole bunch of new gems who have an identity outside of being a Crystal Gem. Some of the Restored want to go back to Homeworld. Some of them want to live on Earth. Some wanna be Crystal Gems, others want nothing to do with the organization despite sharing a planet with it. Some of them hold Connie et al. as messianic figures and others, as the cause of all the problems plaguing this confusing new life they've emerged into.

To the second, with more gems to help, Peridot's technological revolution really starts to gain traction. New devices and materials are rolled out which change the shape of stewarding the Earth. No longer is the Earth scraping by with salvaged Era-1 relics, instead it's starting to build a manufacturing base that is producing _wonders_. This gives rise to a kind of second civilization on Earth, a technologically advanced coalition of gem settlements spread along the eastern seaboard, the growing Crystal Coast. During all of this, gemkind shifts from being mysterious, near-mythical figures to humanity, and starts to become more commonplace. Slowly, humanity and gemkind will start acclimating to one another, exchanging culture and technology, Beach City going from being a curiosity to being more like a model of the future.

To the third, unable to strong-arm or ignore the Earth, Blue and Yellow Diamond are forced for pretty much the first time to engage in diplomacy with another political entity. Which means figuring out how to actually treat with someone who isn't a Diamond's subordinate. And on the Earth side, it means scrambling to meet Homeworld's attention with words and policies rather than just seeing them as some looming threat to fend off with guile and violence. It's unfamiliar territory for everyone involved.

The Earth has Pink Diamond (i.e. Terra), has a bunch of expatriated gems clamoring to return Homeworld, and is starting to produce tools and technology of great interest to the Gempire. So slowly, awkwardly, Homeworld and Earth will try and find a way to coexist, to allow gems to immigrate to whatever place they want to live, and to profit from a sharing of resources and ideas.

HOWEVER, concurrent to all that careful, fragile diplomacy, we have a revolution blazing within the Gempire. Rose had built a hidden rebellion, one poised to overthrow the Diamonds with a surgical coup. With Rose's bubbling and Bismuth's arrival, the HW Rebellion has left the shadows even as it has splintered into factions. No longer is rebellion just a problem confined to Pink's unruly colony. No, now agents are skulking the halls of Homeworld itself and some of the outer systems are in open revolt, shattering their oppressors and exhorting others to do the same.

That's the volatile setting I had envisioned for the future of Connie Swap, the larger stage on which all the sweet moments, drama, personal growth, tragedy, and antics would take place.

* * *

## Character Overview

Empire-wide revolt and sweeping social upheaval is all well and good, but those are things, not people, and Connie Swap is first and foremost about its characters. So with the wider stage described at least in passing, I'd like to touch on the arcs I had in mind for the main cast. I'll delve more into the specifics on some things in other chapters, but here I'm going to give a character-by-character summary.

### Connie

Connie is wanting to try out what a semi-normal life is like. After all, she had her coming-of-age story, saved the world, and now Terra and the growing number of Crystal Gems can keep the planet safe. Put simply, it's time for the plucky heroine to stop focusing on her destiny and start focusing on herself. The adults can deal with running the world she helped save while she does homework and goes on dates with her boyfriend.

To that end, Connie starts attending public school with Steven, Jeff, and Peedee. They're all in the same grade (Connie should be a freshman to Steven's sophomore, but she tested well enough to skip a grade) and Connie is finding the school a strange mix of wonderfully low-stakes, delightfully fun, and deeply confusing (those darn social interactions outside her circle of friends and family).

Now that she isn't having to lean on Steven so much to get her through dark and trying times, she's able to actually explore more what it means to be in a relationship. Plus, more therapy, more _Lutes and Loot_ , more time with her Dad and Priyanka, and more time with Pearl.

However, her gem half isn't letting go easily. Mom finds Connie's shift to public school a bitter pill to swallow (thank goodness Peridot's so busy with other things or she'd be driving Connie nuts) and all of the other CGs sometimes bowl through Connie's plans like the brightly-colored wrecking balls they can be. More unsettling are the Restored who keep coming to Connie for guidance, hero-worship, or (worst of all) to chew her out: half are angry about something her mother did, half are angry about the status quo and think she can just snap her fingers and fix it, and all of them need to leave her alone... _especially when she's trying to sleep!_

And then there's the Diamonds. Homeworld is making awkward steps towards peace with Earth, which is great, but Diamonds and Crystal Gems both keep trying to get Connie to be the spokesperson for Earth in all this, a role she is not at all comfortable inhabiting. The push-pull between her present and her future, her human side and her gem side, her personal life and her larger responsibilities will be something she'll have to navigate.

### Steven

Everything is exciting and everyone is talking about peace and Connie is going to school with him and Mom and Dad have opened up a school for all the new gem people and Miss Peridot and Miss Lapis are adorable and Jasper keeps calling him for advice with Miss Pearl (and those two are doubly adorable except when they're not, but it's still really, really good) and IT'S ALL SO WONDERFUL!

Steven is a diehard romantic and a selfless supporter for Connie, so it takes him and Connie a little by surprise when their relationship shifts from blushing early dates and him helping her deal with destiny overdose to... them being a regular couple. Is it okay if they fuse into Asmi during the school dance? It was fine when they were just around the gems or on a mission, but now it's, well, it's new. Plus, other than a couple of exceptions, Connie and Steven have really different tastes in books and movies and games and, well, most things, and now that there aren't missions and invasions to pull them away, it's starting to become clear that they need more than just gem stuff and Dogcopter to talk about.

Also, Connie is finding all the new people in her life --classmates, envoys from Homeworld, Restored coming by to talk to her-- stressful. Fortunately, Steven can help her with that too! At first he's going to diplomatic meetings as Connie's moral support but before long he's doing most of the talking: it's just people trying to find out how to be friendly with each other which he's really good at seeing and helping! So he's soon kinda sorta the spokesperson for Earth in these talks. He's even getting extra credit in his civics class for attending interplanetary summits!

But then Miss Bismuth's revolution started shattering gems and the Homeworld diplomat asked Steven if he condemned that behavior, Steven said yes, of course. He didn't approve of shattering at all! But since Bismuth kinda was and kinda wasn't a Crystal Gem and since a lot of the Restored rebels on Earth liked Bismuth and since she was friends with Miss Lapis and Jasper and Miss Peridot it made a lot of people unhappy and apparently put the Earth in some sort of tight situation diplomatically.

Who knew getting everyone to just talk about how to be friendly with one another was so complicated?

### Peridot

Peridot is at the forefront of a technological revolution of her own devising. In addition to being a towering figure of science and industry on Earth, she is also a gem of renown among Era-2s: not only does she stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Era-1 paragons but she managed to tap into powers previously thought inaccessible to the generations of gems made during Homeworld's resource crisis.

Furthermore, things are great with Lapis. The two of them spend time together regularly, there's hardly any drama, and they've managed to form Hiddenite multiple times without incident! Why, Hiddenite has even been instrumental in some of Peridot's larger constructions, the combination of precision hydrokinesis, metallokinesis, innate flight, and preternatural talent in front of an audience making her a huge (and very popular) asset in Peridot's arsenal.

But overturning the dominant technological paradigm across _two_ galaxies has its costs. Namely, she has far less time to look after her daughter. It was bad enough when that Pearl started cooking (with Jasper) for Connie, or when she started keeping the Beach House tidy. But now her Connie is receiving tutelage _from other people_. What's an enlightened genius industrialist/guru to do?

 **Author's Note** : Back in Ep38, during Peridot's enlightenment scene, she realized that the power of tech was unbound while magic and muscles were finite. With Era-3 tech starting to ramp up in terms of sophistication and manufacturing capacity, we'd finally get to see some of that. The big promise of Era-3 tech was all the strength of Era-1 materials married to the intelligence/flexibility of Era-2's. And Peridot would showcase this in part through her own rebuilt limb enhancers. The new ones would be a lot less like her 'Megaman Cosplay' set of old, which in a fight sent her flying away for fear of them being damaged in melee, and more like Iron Man's suit, complete with HUD sensor suite and Jarvis-esque A.I. assistance. Combined with her metallokinesis, Peridot's Ep38 promise of ever-escalating power through technological advancement would start becoming a tangible reality, one visible as the armored smart-suit she was wearing.

### Lapis

Lapis was always the most sociable of the gems and so the fact that there were so darn few gems on the planet was a real bummer. But now there's scads of 'em and Lapis is having a great time. She and Amethyst are helping the Restored figure out what's awesome about this planet they've woken up on, as well as what you can and can't get away with when it comes to dealing with the locals.

Peridot is now, like, God-Queen of the nerds and it's adorable how happy she is, and she and Lapis are happy together. Most of the time. It's not all sunshine and rainbows, but it works and that's more than good enough for Lapis. And being Hiddenite is a hoot, doubly so since they can do so guilt-free. They haven't even ruined the family once!

However, there are two big, diamond-shaped problems. Wanna guess what? Yeah, that's right: the Diamonds. Yellow Diamond keeps showing up to meet with Dot about tech stuff, which would be boring if it weren't so terrifying. Just being in the same hemisphere as a Diamond has Lapis rattling the plumbing across a six-block radius. 

That'd be bad enough, but life can never stop picking on Lapis for too long, can it? Heck no!

Blue Diamond wants to talk to her.

[screams for a week straight]

Yellow is all about quotas and resources and stuff, but Blue Diamond? She has _feelings_. Big feelings. Especially about Pink Diamond. And when Big Blue manages to have a chat with Terra and gets chewed out so epically they probably heard it on Neptune, rather than go back to Homeworld to cry, Blue Diamond decides to stick around the Earth for a while and learn more about how it all went wrong.

And part of that means talking to Lapis, apparently.

[summons a 1,000-foot-tall Lapis statue out of water to literally flip off the world]

### Jasper

The war made sense. Go here, fight this, be perfect. What came after the war was harder but at least she always had patrolling to fall back on. Now, there's fewer and fewer corrupted gems left and more and more Returned around to patrol for them. Homeworld isn't invading, it's talking. The world is changing and there doesn't seem to be as much need for someone to flawlessly kick ass as there used to.

However, Jasper has her book club. And her _L &L_ club. She still makes time to play Samwise at Peedee's table when that group can meet, but they have all this human stuff to deal with. Fortunately there's a bunch of gems out there who are discovering that humans had a couple good ideas over the millennia, even if you have to go to the fantasy section of the library to find them. And they want to read and play with the Perfect Quartz.

Can you blame them?

And also there's... Pearl. Somehow she's everything like Jasper despite being nothing like Jasper and sometimes she's all Jasper can seem to think about. It was simple with Citrine: server her, protect her, see her victorious in all things. With Pearl it's completely different and it's great and it's terrible because Jasper has no idea how to handle _requited_ affection. Honestly, she’d be so lost if she didn't have Steven on speed dial.

He did offer to talk with her if she ever wanted to, after all. (Ep20Ch4)

[I'll delve into Jasper and Pearl's relationship more in a separate chapter]

### Pearl

Sometimes it's all so beautiful that Pearl has to burst into song. Sometimes it's so emotional, she has to burst into tears. Sometimes she has to do both at once. It's just such sweet, halcyon days for Pearl even if the sadness and regret are never more than a few paces behind.

Life with Connie is everything Pearl could have hoped and everyone has been so gracious in welcoming her into their home. Especially Jasper, who couldn't be less the uncouth brute Pearl first took her to be. Yes, sometimes she does damage the plates they're washing together, but how could she not when she's so large and strong and... Ah, please forgive this servant's lapse but what were we talking about?

Actually, that's another source of wonder and sadness: Pearl isn't a servant anymore. She's her own gem now. She's learning sword fighting from Connie and Jasper, she's helping Peridot with some quite exciting new projects, she's helping organize the peace talks between Earth and Homeworld, she's worked with Steven's parents to arrange a curriculum for the Returned attending their school, she tidies up the Beach House, she cleans the training equipment and Connie's clothes, she makes sure Connie's bag is packed and her breakfast is ready when she gets up in the morning, she helped decorate Jasper's room of the temple, and... Oh, it can be so hard sometimes knowing when she's being servile out of habit and when it's because that’s how she shows others around her that she cares.

Not that her housekeeping has earned her any appreciation from Peridot lately. While Pearl can understand being passionate about housekeeping, there’s no cause for baseless slander about stealing away the affections of someone’s daughter. Oh and don't even get her _started_ on the ridiculous skirmishes erupting between those rude little robonoids and her holo-pearls.

And then there's Amethyst. She's sweet and she still has that quirk of being guileless to the point it should be blunt but somehow ends up being disarming instead. But she just wants it to be like when it was the two of them hiding from the Crystal Gems and, though that time had moments Pearl will always treasure, it's past and not something Pearl would want to return to even if she were able. Plus, she can get so nasty around Jasper sometimes.

[Wistful sigh] Oh, Pearl wouldn't get so maudlin if Connie were still at home. She spends so much time at that school of hers now, or with Steven, or her father. Without her around it makes it too easy to think back. To regret. Rose was able to protect herself against everything. It was only because she trusted Pearl completely that she'd been able to stab and poof- Oh fie. She promised Jasper she wouldn't keep crying over that gem and here she is, going back on her word and looking a fright all at once. No, this won’t do. [retrieves handkerchief and cleaning supplies]

### Amethyst

Amethyst was always more of a character to galvanize the plot than she was a character that my co-creators or I had big plans for. Unlike a lot of the other characters, things tended to happen _to_ Amethyst more than they happened _for_ Amethyst.

That'd be a little different going forward, but only a little. Sadly, the cast of the fic was already pretty broad, and with more than enough other things going on that not everyone could get some multi-episode arcs of personal growth and character-tailored adventure.

Amethyst would assume a role kind of similar to what she had in _SU Future_ , becoming one of the educators for the new gems on Earth. It'd start off as we saw it in Ep39 and Ep40, with her helping her cured Quartz Pack packmates acclimate to the new world around them, and then it just kind of snowballs from there. She and Lapis work together in this regard, with Lapis being more of a guide to interacting with human culture/society and Amethyst being more of a guide to the great outdoors/playing nice with nature and the squishy organics that live in it.

She is possessive of Pearl and that doesn't go all that well for her. For a time she regularly challenges Jasper to combat, but after some initial acrimony, the whole thing turns into a form of bonding between the Quartzes and the two would eventually mellow out and make amends.

She'd also be busting out her Purple Puma persona for bouts with Kwartz, a kind of parallel gem-based wrestling league emerging in the process.

Amethyst's big entrance into the foreground would be when she realizes that her Famethyst back on the Zoo station are still out there and she totally needs to get them away from Holly Blue Agate and down to Earth. She ends up sparking a diplomatic incident when she and Lapis pull a heist to visit the station and offer the Quartzes there a secret trip outta there.

The heist itself would be a big, slapstick hijinks-fest, the sort some of P2's remarks implied were commonplace when Amethyst was working on the station before Rose hauled her back to Earth. Holly Blue gets led on a silly hunt and bamboozled. Benny Hill and probably Scooby Doo get referenced during it all, and ultimately some (but not all) of the Famethyst agree to return with Amethyst. That others decided to remain would be something of an epiphany for Amethyst, that having your pack/family is important but it's not everything to everyone. Not even other Amethysts.

Of course, the fact that denizens of Earth unlawfully entered Homeworld space and allowed Gempire citizens to illegally emigrate would be part of the larger subplot about diplomatic push-and-pull between Homeworld and Earth.

### Garnet

Garnet finds herself torn in half, both metaphorically and rather less so. On the one hand, her Future Vision-assisted Xanatos Gambit worked: she was able to arrange for Terra to form and so offer new life to the forced fusions and shattered gems of Earth. On the other hand, she could have stopped Rose sooner (e.g. during the Sanctuary ambush in Ep36) and didn't, her elaborate game of prediction and deceit culminating with Rose being revealed to be monstrous and an innocent gem being shattered by her former general's own hands.

Garnet genuinely had kept faith in Rose through the events of the Rose Arc, ignoring the uncomfortable signs of the present so she could focus on a future she thought would see Rose surrender and mend her ways. That faith was broken and the argument you saw erupt between Ruby and Sapphire back in Ep32 is rekindled in a big way.

Having deep regrets about Rose is actually something she and Pearl end up bonding over, the two having at least that much in common. They don't end up becoming fast friends, but they would have at least one emotionally candid scene together where they air their grievances and lamentations that it turned out the way it did.

Jasper, who has always had a... fraught relationship with Garnet, thinks this is the fusion encouraging/enabling Pearl's unhealthy servile/romantic feelings towards Rose and the two clash over it at least a little bit.

Moving on, Garnet finds all the new gems on Earth wonderful in concept (a glorious success for her and them) but in practice she finds it hard being... social again, millennia spent alone together doing her few favors. She does enjoy spending time with Asmi and even goes out of her way to visit Hiddenite, so she's not without friends, but she's got a long journey to becoming comfortable in the world she helped bring about.

Speaking of, the aforementioned Ruby and Sapphire argument would give rise to a multi-episode arc with those two separated. That would be partially for my own selfish enjoyment of having more Ruby screentime (Sapphire too, though she's trickier to do right) and partially so that some of Garnet's long-bottled up frustrations can come roaring to the fore, bellowed at volume by Ruby or hissed by a fatalistic Sapphire for any to hear. Like having Jasper open up in _Sworn to the Shield_ so that her issues can ultimately be addressed, this would be Garnet's unflappable facade thoroughly, uh, flapped.

This Garnet Fission Arc would also coincide with Jasper and Pearl having some fusion issues of their own, but I'll go more into that in the Jaspearl chapter.

### The Human Parents

Greg and Mary are relieved the insanity is over. Pearl can't help but notice that the musical doorbell to their home is programmed to play a clip of 'Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead' for the month following Rose's defeat.

Ultimately with more and more gems entering the scene and Steven (and, less willingly, Connie) becoming figures of influence among them, Mary and Greg decide to put their money and talents to use, taking some of the load off their kids' shoulders. This happens following an incident where several Restored effectively follow Steven home and pretend to be interested in music lessons so they aren't thrown out... only for several to find they actually enjoy music. As such, the two open The School of Rock and I can only assume in-universe they had their lawyers clear the name with Jack Black's people first.

The School of Rock is like _SU Future's_ Little Homeworld in that it's a place for gems to learn and acclimate to the world around them. But given who the founders are, there's a heavy emphasis on music appreciation, music lessons, music in general, but also about respect and honesty and not hounding people like, say, Connie or Steven just because they're celebrities to you.

This gives us more Universe-Lapis and Universe-Amethyst interactions too as all the disparate efforts to try and educate the Restored all end up coordinating together. This holds doubly for the Universe family and Bill Dewey, the mayor extending aid, financing, and lots of 'Vote for Dewey' stickers for the school built just within the city limits.

Doug finds himself as the recipient of a lot of unwanted attention as well, both as Citrine's former lover and as Connie's father. The attention varies between the curious, the unwanted, and the outright angry ("My general would be alive if it weren't for you!"). He ends up doing a lot to both shield Connie and himself from encounters like those, his career in security and event work coming to the fore. Ultimately he ends up partnering with the Universes, covering those aspects of the School of Rock's operations (as well as for the numerous satellite campuses that ultimately get founded) through his own company.

He also gets to bond more with Connie. See, during the main fic, especially after P2 started dropping robonoids on the planet in the lead up to the actual invasion, Connie and Doug had most of their time waylaid, put on hold or otherwise squeezed to deal with the escalating invasion crisis. The man was nearly a non-entity after Connie's birthday episode (and even that was more focused on Priyanka than him), so here the two of them would get to make up for lost time.

Connie is trying to do more 'human stuff' and the fact that some of her troubles these days include homework and social anxiety before school dances means that Doug has more common ground and pearls of paternal wisdom to share than when her main issues were 'How do I stop a body-hopping, regenerating invader of doom?'

Priyanka had her big tie-in illustrated in the last vignette: helping Connie deal with her role as the sole person capable of curing corrupted gems, warding off burnout and helping find ways to streamline the procedure. At some point she and Doug will get formally married: they plan on having no ceremony, just a Justice of the Peace to officiate the marriage and then a dinner at a nice restaurant for their friends and family after. However, the CGs will go overboard, complete with Tik-Tok howdah, confetti cannons, and a wedding cake straight out of _Gem Harvest_.

### P3

She'll be fixture in the Earth-HW diplomacy plot, working hard to lay the groundwork for the initial summit between Yellow Diamond and the CGs. That she is a living embodiment of the new changes on Earth will make her fascinating to Homeworld on top of the notoriety earned from her (or rather, her predecessor, P2's) broadcast.

Pretty much any time Yellow Diamond and Earth come up in the same context, P3 will be there or otherwise mentioned. Because of her close association with Pink Diamond, she'll also get waylaid by Blue Diamond a lot, the blue gem eager for any and all information regarding her little sister and how it all turned out the way it did. However, beyond that, she'll be living her best life on Earth.

The fact that she's now part Nephrite means that she's become a fan of flight (and crunchy things, because: Centipeetle and Chaaaaps). When she learns that Steven's uncle is a pilot, she'll badger the man into giving her lessons.

And, yes, she'll get that hug from Yellow Diamond one day. And, yes, Yellow Diamond will be very awkward about it.

### The Townies

Because of the shoutout to The Big Donut in P2's broadcast in general, and her praising Sadie and criticizing Lars specifically, The Big Donut finds itself becoming a landmark/tourist destination for humans and gems alike (remember that that broadcast of P2's was showing up on all TVs across North America if not the entire world).

And with that, Sadie and Lars find themselves the focus of more attention as well, being the equivalent of Internet Famous to two species at once. I honestly can't say if I'd try to work in Sadie's singing career for the pair. I could see her acting as an opener for Sour Cream but then again, with her newfound success at the Big Donut (Big Donut corporate using the broadcast and her for publicity, giving her raises and promotions in the process), she might never end up going that route... though she'd kill it whenever it was open mic night in town.

Lars, when pressed, says that he's just glad to have survived the whole invasion thing and leaves it at that.

Peedee and Jeff start dating at some point. Their attraction was in the subtext of the main fic but here it'd come to the fore. I mean, since I was partially ripping off CoreyWW's [The Connie Maheswaran Fanclub](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7746817/chapters/17662573) fic with Jeff and Peedee to begin with, there's no reason not to go the rest of the way. [Seriously, go read that fic if you haven't. It's great.]

Sour Cream remains a musical success and the poly-Cool Kids remain poly and cool. I didn't have any specific plans for SC save for a cameo or two regarding the School of Rock.

Buck Dewey enters politics, not to become mayor after his father but rather to help run one of the mixed gem-human settlements that spring up along the Crystal Coast. It'd be this gradual thing, with him being there to help drop off forms and stuff when it was first being founded and then the story would pop in a month or two later and you'd see him helping bewildered contractors who aren't familiar with working around gemkind and eventually the settlement would be large enough to incorporate into an actual, recognized city and he'd go from de facto mayor to actual mayor.

Kiki would eventually leave for college and, absent her 'good twin' to contrast herself against, Jenny would find herself actually getting into this whole pizza business thing. When Connie noticed Jenny actually working hard one day, the twin would answer back, "Yeah, Con-Con. It turns out I'm actually pretty awesome at it."

There may or may not be a dig in there about phone sweaters at some point.

Ronaldo would be probably the most affected of the townies. A theme of all this is greater attention and integration between humanity and gemkind which would help draw Ronaldo from niche obscurity to a veteran blog-journalist who'd been at the epicenter of all this for years. His blog was already more popular in CS than in SU, hence his network of truthseekers to help track down corrupted gems and the like. And here'd it'd rise to even higher heights, with the usual blend of piercing, almost supernatural insight into hidden truths combined with tinfoil hat conspiracies.

He'd effectively be a reporter around town covering events. When Connie and co. are overwhelmed with unwanted attention, he'd be part of the paparazzi. But he'd also be important for some of the political unrest and skullduggery that'd come out in time as sections of the Restored became unruly. [more on that in another chapter]

We'd also see the return of Cassie, one of the two hikers Steven met in Ep37Ch3. She was interested in gem ruins back then and would be among the curious humans visiting Beach City to see more of the gem-based goings-ons there. She’d follow Ronaldo’s blog but be skeptical of all the conclusions. But she’d run into Steven at some point around town and the two would catch up.

### Wolf

He’s Wolf. Noggin scratches, tummy rubs, and pork for the best dog in this or any other world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bismuth, Spinel, and the Diamonds will get a chapter all their own as I go into the revolution arc in more details. The same for the broader Earth diplomacy arc and how the Restored fit into it all.


	5. Jaspearl

Hooboy, I could write an entire fic about those two's courtship. One of my [favorite fics](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5676712/chapters/13077076) does exactly that, in fact.

The fact is, both Jasper and Pearl ended Ep40 with a giant stretch of personal growth and 'looking for reinvention and happiness' in front of them. They both have mountains of baggage about their former Quartz love and their servile relationship towards that love. And they both have a good blend of self-seriousness and dramatic acts which would make their courtship a soap opera of comedic and dramatic proportions.

Plus, I just really enjoy their character arcs. After nearly 40 episodes of deliberately drawing parallels between the two, it'd be gratifying to get to have the two of them actually interact with one another long-form.

### Will They/Won't They?

Anyway, Jasper is crushing on Pearl and Pearl is crushing on Jasper and both of them are gems who _really_ want someone in their life but both of them also have emotional minefields to traverse before it's safe to do so.

Early on the pair are in denial about it. Like with Connie and Steven, everyone else can see the attraction between them and when someone calls them on it, both of them grow flustered and deny it.

It's during this time that Amethyst gets jealous/possessive of Pearl, lashing out at Jasper. The two Quartzes clash but it doesn't take long for the two of them to fight just for the love of fighting. This'd go on in the background across multiple episodes, the two of them eventually bonding over it and burying the hatchet, though it'd be a while coming.

During the first couple of fights, Pearl finds herself annoyed and worried and she goes to Lapis to vent. And Lapis teases out that Pearl finds it flattering as well (because Lapis is an inveterate tease) and when Pearl confesses she has no idea why, Lapis breaks down laughing.

Moving on, Pearl has since joined The Warriors of Literacy with Jasper and Connie, the three discussing books and Jasper being impressed with Pearl's reading of various texts. Oh, and that floral pattern bookmark that Pearl gave Jasper back in Ep38? It has a picture of a tiger lily on it and at one point Lapis borrows it for one of her mangas and gets chewed out by an incensed Jasper when the Quartz discovers this.

Meanwhile, Connie and Jasper are training Pearl in sword fighting and being her own gem. However, school/Steven/Doug end up interfering such that suddenly Connie's not able to make some of the sessions. Then it's just Jasper and Pearl.

Cue a dual POV scene where the training session starts out completely normal but grows increasingly amorous, each of them _noticing_ things about the other. Then there's a fight-as-flirtation sequence that ends with a passionate kiss.

Then the backpedaling. Actually, that'd be a theme with these two: they're both such earnest but damaged souls that nearly every step forward is met with at least a momentary step back by one of them, the gem held back by one of their emotional fetters. In this case, though, it's each of them recoiling because of the sting of their still-raw recent loves.

Pearl goes off and gets maudlin about Rose. Is she being unfair to Jasper? Does she genuinely feel affectionate toward Jasper or is Jasper just her Rose replacement? She was an unfaithful Pearl to Rose so does she even deserve someone like Jasper? Connie, Steven, and Lapis will be doing a lot of running Pearl interference following this.

Jasper, meanwhile, retreats into patrolling while she mulls something heavy over: is she worthy of Pearl? She wasn't worthy of Citrine, after all.

So, remember this bit from Ep19Ch6 [emphasis mine]

> The Quartz considered this, her expression giving nothing away. She strode the length of the apartment then paused at the door. "Did Citrine ever say why I was unworthy?"
> 
> He shook his head. "Don't do that to yourself, Jasper."
> 
> Going from calm to livid in the span of a second, Jasper’s hands balled into fists and, through clenched teeth, she demanded, "Did she?!"
> 
> **"No," Doug lied. "She never did.** Go home, Jasper. The others miss you."
> 
> She gave him a long look which Doug did his best to meet unflinchingly. Then she gave him a small bow, opened the door, then stepped through and out of sight.

The fact of the matter is that Citrine never reciprocated Jasper's affection and, like Rose said during her Ep40 flashbacks, never really knew how to deal with that. Instead each of them just focused on what _wasn't_ complicated: fighting, victory, service.

Doug changed all that because Citrine had to step down from the pedestal to date him. Jasper _loathed_ Doug early on, a fact Citrine saw and didn't have the slightest idea how to handle. And then he accidentally shattered that gem and Jasper broke his leg and he nearly got banished from the group by vote. So while Doug was in the hospital, Citrine went on a patrol with Jasper and told her that she and Doug had been dueling for Citrine's affection and that Doug had won. And that she would be disappointed if Jasper didn't '[afford him the respect the victor was due.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13894644/chapters/32158776)'

In short, Citrine was faced with Jasper's jealousy and, not knowing how to deal with it, she cast the whole thing in a combat/duel metaphor with Doug the victor. Jasper internalized this, placing Doug on a similar pedestal to Citrine: he was worthy and Jasper was not. Mystery solved.

Well, now Jasper is freaking out. She knows she's worth something 'on the market' but for gems she really likes (Citrine, now Pearl) she has this reflexive impulse to raise them up while lowering herself down. So... she goes to Doug for answers. He was worthy after all, so maybe he can teach her how to be worthy as well.

That this is another 'Jasper breaks the door visiting Doug's apartment at, like, 2am' goes without saying.

After Doug gets the details of Jasper's worry straight, he tells her the truth: the 'worthiness' thing was a lie. Citrine just didn't reciprocate Jasper's feelings and didn't know how to deal with her. So she framed it in a way she thought Jasper would obey and left it at that.

And, yeah, that's kind of messed up.

Doug always felt a little guilty about it, but he and Jasper had been mutually antagonistic early on so he'd felt no need to share hard truths with his insufferable rival. And after Citrine's death it seemed comparatively unimportant, him and Jasper both coping with intense grief. Bringing it up would be like salting a wound, so he never did... But now it was clearly a problem for Jasper, so he was willing to rip that band-aid off.

[As an aside, this fits into the larger theme of Citrine taking the temporary/short-term solution for problems among the gems; she knows how to decisively wage a war, but off the battlefield she's a lot less effective.]

Jasper takes this... poorly.

### Painfully Cute

Jasper's gone for a few days, rage-patrolling, all while Pearl is freaking out because she's worried she's somehow responsible for this. Then, while Pearl is being wistful on the porch while Connie sleeps, Jasper emerges and the two have a brief balcony scene (ala _Romeo and Juliette_ ), Jasper announcing that neither legacy or the opinions of others matter, only what she and Pearl think (If able, I'd try to work in callbacks to Priyanka telling Jasper off for being 'unworthy' of Doug back in Ep14), and that she likes Pearl and wants to try.

Pearl, flustered but also loving the hell out of this, ultimately agrees and is literally swept off her feet, declaring from Jasper's arms that she'll brave unknown waters with Jasper to find love on the other side.

Then Connie, tired and in her PJs, tells them through the screen door that that's great but can they please keep it down because it's three in the morning.

At this point, Jasper and Pearl become nauseatingly cute together. Steven thinks it's beautiful but everyone else finds the sight of a twitterpated Jasper unsettling.

It's during this time that Jasper is calling Steven regularly for advice on dating, because Jasper's never done it before but clearly Steven has. Pearl, meanwhile, is gushing to Connie at every opportunity, and hearing about how her warrior mom is a 'rampant tigress who's fierce but cuddly' is making her want to reach for the brain bleach.

The thing is, both Jasper and Pearl are used to expressing their affection through service. Also, they're both unused to being the recipient of affection, so they're each propelled towards ever larger displays of affection and devotion.

A problem that arises in time is that Connie sees some worrying parallels between some of Pearl's behavior and how Steven acted when he was all _m'lady_ back in Ep19. That was due to Jasper's influence, after all. And Pearl being allowed to fall back into a servile mode would be very bad considering how important fostering her independence is.

Connie brings this up to Jasper and Jasper, after a few denials, finally agrees that it _would_ be bad if Pearl was treating Jasper like she treated Rose. Jasper brings this up with Pearl a little later and, between Jasper handling the conversation clumsily and this touching on a genuine worry of Pearl's, it ends in tears and the relationship 'on hold.'

### No Longer Cute, Just Painful

"Romance is terrible. Anyone who tells you otherwise should be punched in the face."  
-Jasper, during this time.

Like Connie back in Ep33 after her fight with Steven, this is the first time Jasper's had requited romantic drama. It's much more visceral than the unrequited kind. Steven wakes up early one morning and finds Jasper standing outside waiting for him and he texts Connie, 'I might not make it to brunch.'

Steven helps Jasper work through her feelings, the two sharing a montage of 'coping with relationship blues' scenes like them sitting on the couch with bowls of ice cream while watching sad movies. At one point Steven gets up to go to the bathroom and Jasper, all alone, leans down and actually takes a micro-bite of the untouched bowl of ice cream in her lap.

Pearl, meanwhile, has a long walk set to a song/monologue about her complicated feelings. This ends with her arriving at the fake vault built to house Rose's gemstone (though in truth the vault is a trap and a red herring, the bubbled gemstone kept somewhere far away). Garnet is there waiting for her.

This is when Pearl and Garnet have their 'regrets about Rose' discussion, Garnet sad that her former general turned out to be an unrepentant monster when she'd been hoping the gem would recant and take a turn for the better following her surrender. Pearl shares her own regrets, talking about how Rose was wonderful and how Rose was terrible and the stone-deep desire she once had for it all to work out better.

At this point the Jaspearl subplot would take a break, other matters taking the foreground. Things are awkward between Jasper and Pearl but not necessarily toxic, each of them throwing themselves into their respective tasks/chores/hobbies to compensate. So there’s less awkwardness, Jasper steps away from Connie and Pearl's sword training and Pearl bows out of the book club.

### Lessons Learned

It bears pointing out that that whole ‘CGs dissing on Pearls’ theme from earlier in the series will have finally finished its long, slow death-by-inches. Around this time Jasper will be out sparring with some Jasper fangirl of a Restored, who remarks at the start of the match about that fancy Pearl Jasper owns and how bad-ass it is that Jasper stole Rose’s own Pearl away from her.

Jasper proceeds to rather literally beat some sense into the gem, disabusing her of the notion that Pearl is owned by Jasper or anybody else, that owning Pearls is a good thing, or that Pearl is good only as decoration.

Like many lessons, Jasper learns (and teaches) best with accompanying violence.

It's during this break that Pearl summons her weapon, by the way. I'd want the timing to be like this, that way the accomplishment of her summoning the spear (it's really a glaive, but that's a rant for another time) is entirely her own, not an extension of Connie's or Jasper's. Not that there's anything wrong with having loved ones helping loved ones succeed, but given that Pearl's character arc is about personal independence, it's cleaner if it happens for her all on her own.

In this case it's that particularly officious and colorful Mended mentioned in the first vignette --a Homeworld partisan that has been trying to return to her Diamond's court and has been loudly complaining to the CGs throughout-- sees Pearl around Beach City. Having heard that Pearl once built a ship to take her and Amethyst back to Homeworld space, she orders Pearl to do the same for her, now.

Pearl tries to turn her away, making various excuses why that's not a good idea, but the Mended is having none of it. When pressed, it comes out that Pearl could probably make another ship given the parts available, especially given Peridot's industrial revolution taking place AND the fact that Pearl wouldn't have to be working from hiding. So why then won't Pearl 'serve her role' now?

BECAUSE SHE DOESN'T WANT TO! That gem doesn't own Pearl, no one does, Pearl gets to define her own role, and frankly the trip back to Homeworld was a little harebrained and desperate then when there wasn't a fragile diplomatic state between Earth and Homeworld. So no, she won't do it!

The mended gets irate and goes to try and physically drag Pearl to a workshop to make her do it and Pearl's combat training from Connie and Jasper comes to the fore, her holding off the larger gem. Ultimately things escalate when the Mended pulls a weapon (a scintillating, many-colored whip) and then Pearl summons her own.

Word of the disturbance reaches Jasper, who literally tears through the door in her haste to reach Pearl in time. And she arrives to find Pearl scuffed, bruised, disheveled, and absolutely triumphant, an ear-to-ear smile on her face as she stands proudly, weapon in hand over the poofed gemstone of her attacker.

A bit of celebration and reconciliation later, the two are willing to resume training (and the book club). Pearl is learning more about her weapon --which Connie and Jasper both have a lot of advice about what goes into the summoning/meaning thereof-- as well as how to fight with it. Ultimately, the two of them talk and recognize that they obviously have feelings for one another and so long as they're mindful of the other's baggage, they shouldn't deny themselves the happiness of the other's affection. So, with far less fanfare as before, the two quietly resume dating.

### Together Again

The subplot moves into the background again as other plots take the fore.

The next time it comes up is when Pearl puts on a production for the CGs. After seeing the sorry state of theater in Beach City --she excitedly attends a play of Jamie's with Connie only to leave disappointed-- she declares that not only can she do better herself but she will!

And she does, putting on a production --of a traditional Homeworld drama-- with all the ingenuity and panache as you'd expect from Pearl going full theater-mode. And part of it involves an elaborate dance number Pearl performs personally, to great acclaim from the audience.

Jasper is awestruck. Pearl is so talented! Not only did she write _The Tale of the Hero and the Companion_ , she put together that entire show and was _amazing._

The two of them are at the Sky Arena and supposed to be training, but Connie's busy elsewhere and Jasper is too distracted to focus. When Jasper praises Pearl, Pearl demurs, saying that performing was always in her wheelhouse, being a Pearl. Jasper disagrees vehemently: she was taken to the Ziggurat by Pink Diamond and she saw the Pearls there put on giant productions. None of them, Jasper insists, were as good as Pearl.

Pearl blushes and while that's very kind of Jasper to say, the proper production involves a duet, two dancers. The holo-pearls are hopeless dancers so she had to choreograph it for one and she felt like it suffered for it.

Half on impulse and half following where Pearl is going with this, Jasper offers to dance with her. There's some cute, clumsy moments early on as they get used to one another and dance. It bears mentioning that Jasper knows how to ballroom dance on account of having attended balls, it's just a facet of her that very seldom comes up.

And, along the way, they fuse.

[I have no idea what their fusion's name is or what she'd look like. Sorry, I'm not the member of the creative team that handled that stuff.]

Within the fusion, Jasper is elated. It's amazing and pure and their fusion is awesome! Pearl enjoys it for about 5 seconds before visceral flashbacks to Rainbow Quartz have the fusion splitting, Pearl freaking out and suffering some serious PTSD.

It's at this time that the Ruby and Sapphire Arc happens, Garnet's internal discord over Rose reaches a breaking point and Ruby and Sapphire split. Ruby comes tromping up to the Beach House and declares that she lives here now. Sapphire, meanwhile, has claimed the top of the water tower (much to Lapis and Peridot's annoyance... as well as the mayor's since she's freezing the water, causing problems for the municipal water supply).

That the most stable fusion ever has just split over Rose-related drama isn't lost on Jasper and Pearl. Effectively, Jasper and Pearl address their own issues through trying to help Ruby and Sapphire. Baggage surrounding Rose is opened up and unpacked while Ruby rails and Sapphire tries to remain above it all. Dr. Brooks is brought in and Jasper (accompanying Ruby) and Pearl (separately accompanying Sapphire) effectively attend therapy by proxy.

This would be a multi-episode arc but by the end of it, things would be a lot better for Pearl and Jasper (and Ruby and Sapphire, but this isn't the Rupphire chapter so they don't get a full summary). And Pearl agrees to try fusing with Jasper again, though only for one minute. And then, maybe in a week, they can try again for two minutes. And they'll keep trying little-by-little and see where it takes them.

There'd certainly be more --details to go between the points I mentioned above as well as more Jaspearl beats-- to follow the conclusion of the Ruby and Sapphire Arc. However, that's as far/deep as my own planning went on the subject.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There'll be three sections more to go up, though it's possible #1 and #2 might end up combined into a single chapter:  
> 1) The HW Revolution arc (e.g. Bismuth, Spinel, the Diamonds)  
> 2) The Restored arc (i.e. the new polities of gems living on Earth changing the status quo)  
> 3) Cut/Unused scenes (i.e. stuff that was once planned in the main fic that was cut because the plot went another direction)
> 
> Also, [SilverScribe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilverScribe/pseuds/SilverScribe), I hope all of this outlines a future for Pearl that would represent the payoff to your long-awaited conclusion for the gem. I know you were following the fic for years in part to see how it'd go for her.


	6. Diamonds and Diplomacy, Revolution and Repentance

### The Restored

Connie is curing gems of their corruption (and better able to do so sustainably and without burning out thanks to Priyanka's assistance). These gems are the Cured and as Connie's methods get better, she'll be increasing their numbers between 100 and 300 a year. Terra, meanwhile, is releasing new Mended: reassembled shards that are personality-wise compatible with one another and want to leave the larger Cluster collective. These will be emerging from below the Earth's mantle in fits and starts but numbering comparably with the Cured.

Collectively, the Cured and the Mended are known as the Restored, and they will swiftly constitute so large and diverse a population as to change the inter-gem politics on the planet, as well as fundamentally altering the relationship between humanity and gemkind.

The first issue is what to do with all these new gems? Where will they live? Who will help explain the strange new world they're waking up to, and who will be responsible for making sure they don't cause problems for the Earth and the other life (organic and gem-based) living on it?

Settlements along the eastern seaboard (eventually known as the Crystal Coast) will be assembled, the Restored separating themselves into various communities. Some of them are Homeworld-loyalists (soldiers corrupted at the end of the war or Mended made from the shattered remnants of the same) who only want to leave the planet and return to their old lives. Others are former rebels who want to enjoy the curious peace they've emerged into, though as you can imagine, tempers can quickly run short between the two groups. Still others are more esoteric, wanting to use their new lease on life to do something completely different: rebuild old ruins; build new buildings or technology; explore new hobbies; see more of what humanity has to offer outside of a few Crystal Coast enclaves; leave Earth to settle down elsewhere, beholden to no rebel faction nor the Diamond Authority.

Managing all of this is a complicated new challenge for the Crystal Gems, the Restored, and the human governments of Earth as well. It's the start of a bold, new era and no one really knows what to expect or how best to respond.

It also poses some real challenges for Connie and co. personally, as they're figures of renown to most, be they esteemed, worshiped, mistrusted, or reviled. Much of this friction is alluded to in the Setting and Characters Overview chapter so I won’t repeat that here, but I do have one novel example to share.

During Rose's invasion, the giant statue decorating the temple was destroyed. At first carving a new statue is pushed down the priority list, everyone being far too busy to mess with it. But later, as the Crystal Coast expands and the number of gems who have explicitly (re)joined the Crystal Gems swells, the idea is brought back up as something that'd be symbolic and help beautify a landmark of great significance.

But what should the new statue look like?

A large number want it carved to look like Citrine. However, others argue that that isn't forward-facing. Also, the former Rose-loyalists among the expanded CG ranks are asking to have it be Citrine AND Rose. That idea is vetoed hard by, among others, Jasper, Lapis, Peridot, Connie, and (to the surprise of many) Garnet as well. Instead, the suggestion that it's restored to showing Selenite like it did originally is floated, but Connie argues that that excludes Peridot, who was every bit the vital member of CGs. Sculpting the fusion of Connie, Jasper, Lapis, and Peridot is vetoed because 1) several of the gems involved don't want to fuse for a statue and others are upset that that would exclude Bismuth or Garnet or P2.

A surprise consensus does emerge as an image that'd be emblematic of both the new future as well as a continuation of the past: Connie. The proposal actually gets majority approval but there's one small problem: Connie is _NOT AT ALL_ okay with having the temple sculpted to look like her. With Connie's vocal refusal, the initiative stalls and for a long time the cliff remains scarred from Pyra's Rose-led assault and unadorned. Eventually the stone is smoothed and the insignia of the Crystal Gems is carved above the Beach House as a humble compromise.

And that's only the friction among the self-professed Crystal Gems. There's also a whole bunch more gems who don't like the Earth, who never liked the Earth or the life upon it, and who are desperate to leave the Earth _but aren't able to_ : it’s a pressure cooker just waiting to explode.

The Diamonds don't receive their expatriated subjects with open arms at first because they represent an unprecedented population, gems who defy the pre-existing roles and strata of Homeworld's caste system. The Cured are the most straight-forward, but their physical irregularities (e.g. horns, mottling, discoloration) could mark them as off-colors. Should they be shattered or embedded like other off-colors? Some of the Cured were Era-1 gems of influence and renown. Shattering an esteemed White Court Hessonite, for example, is something Blue and Yellow Diamond are nervous to do without White Diamond's agreement, and Yellow Diamond is pragmatic enough to know that the Gempire could really benefit from the influx of loyal laborers.

Then there's the Mended, who completely defy categorization. There's a scintillating Mended who claims to be the combination of no less than twelve White Court aristocrats. Should she be welcomed back? And if so, does she rank as highly as an Emerald because she is 1/10th Emerald, or does she only rank as an Agate since, if you add up all three types of Agate that comprise her, she's 55% Agate? What about a Mended that's part Ruby and part Zircon? Are they warrior caste or administrative caste?

The Diamond Authority operates on clean lines, lines which these gems threaten to muddy beyond recognition even if they all earnestly snap the Diamond salute.

The representatives of Earth have made it clear that they won't be handing these gems over to the Diamonds if all that awaits them is shattering or embedding, so after some tense and awkward negotiations, the Diamonds agree to take the least contentious members of the Cured to start, buying time to think about how to receive the more confounding members of the loyal subjects.

The pressure cooker vents a little steam, but the pressure continues to build as new Restored arrive every month. Also, the number of attempts at freeing 'Rose' from the big, conspicuous vault built to house her is going up slowly but steadily. So far the ruse is working as intended but it underscores the instability of the situation.

### HW Upheavals

Not all of the status quo upsets would be confined to Earth.

Rose, after all, had been quietly building a power base of rebels and reformists ready to affect change across Homeworld space. That said change would in effect be a coup --a fragmented Pink Diamond as the figurehead and Rose Quartz as the true power behind the throne, the Cluster there as a big stick to threaten the unruly-- wasn't universally known, nor that it'd involve stranding Blue and Yellow Diamond on remote asteroids via warp pad shenanigans and hoping _really, really hard_ that White Diamond remained sequestered.

The point being, Rose wouldn't have found traction in her subterfuge if the frustrations and faultlines didn't already exist in the Gempire. But instead of a sudden, silent coup, there is now a noisy and fragmented revolution blazing at the fringes of the empire, a fire in the Diamonds' backyard at the same time they're trying to deal with the unprecedented situation on Earth.

Bismuth's revolutionaries have aggressively and, for want of a better phrase, bloodily seized several fringe systems. After the initial, overconfident attempts by the Diamonds to regain control via military force fail, the systems are severed from the larger warp network and put under blockade, their message of social upheaval suppressed but not completely silenced.

Another faction has taken control of a smaller swath of territory but with a greater emphasis on subterfuge and populist messaging. The Rose Buds as they've taken to call themselves, have a more moderate voice, calling for reforms for the betterment of gemkind, but the shift away from caste-based absolutism is no less threatening to the Diamond Authority. This faction is proving far more difficult to identify and contain even if they're less disruptive in the short-term.

### A Tangle of Two Homeworlds

Despite there being multiple gem polities on Earth and multiple factions within Homeworld, the Crystal Gems are speaking for the Earth and the Diamond Authority is speaking for Homeworld space. After all, the Crystal Gems were the ones named by Pink Diamond/Terra as her spokespersons and P3 has made it her mission to facilitate talks between the Diamonds and the CGs.

Yellow Diamond is most interested in tapping into the wellspring of new technologies emerging, this new Era-3 paradigm spearheaded by a wayward Peridot from her own court. That and bringing long-lost subjects back into the fold so they can return to their stations and help silence these tedious noises of rebellion.

Blue Diamond, however, wants nothing more than to reconnect with Pink Diamond. The matriarch makes a number of concessions and thinly-veiled threats all so she can meet face-to-face with Pink... where Terra proceeds to loudly unload millennia of grievances at all three Diamonds' feet, but Blue and Yellow most of all. As Pink Diamond, she rails against Blue for her long, agonizing descent into despair, the ruination of her ambitions, and Blue ultimately being complicit in her shattering if only through incompetence. And as the multitude of other gems making up Terra (many of whom were once Blue Court gems themselves), the thousands of years of shattering and mercurial rule were thrown in Blue Diamond's face as well before Terra retreated back into the Earth to leave a dumbstruck and sobbing Blue Diamond behind.

Yellow Diamond, offended on her sister's behalf, threatens the Earth with reprisals unless an apology is offered by Terra, but Blue Diamond interrupts (still sobbing), claiming that she wants no apology, only understanding. She declares that she will remain on Earth until she understands why Pink would say such things and whether or not Pink's accusations were true.

This is when Blue Diamond starts gathering evidence for a trial of sorts, more to understand what happened and how it all went so wrong. It's this multi-episode plot that involves her plying P3 for details and questioning those Crystal Gems and Restored that have pertinent information, including a _VERY_ unhappy Lapis Lazuli. It'd actually be the chance for Lapis to, if not put to rest, then at least face a few of her extreme fears surrounding the Diamonds in general and her Diamond specifically.

Officially, the Earth has claimed neutrality in the uprisings taking place in Homeworld space. This is a pragmatic concern because without it, talks with the Diamonds would be effectively impossible. However, the Crystal Gems themselves are broadly in favor of the rebellious elements abroad, though support for the revolutionaries or the reformists is divided among the Crystal Gems. This is why when Steven, who had been one of the rising stars in the hastily-assembled CG diplomatic corps, goes on record as condemning Bismuth's revolution for widespread shattering, it puts the CGs in a diplomatic bind.

The statement causes unrest at home and is used by the Diamond Authority as propaganda to undermine Bismuth's revolution specifically and rebellion/reform more broadly.

Both factions, Bismuth's and the Rose Buds, had been quietly reaching out to Earth for two things:  
1) Support: resources, technology, volunteers, using their diplomatic leverage with the Diamonds to aid them.  
2) Guidance: Citrine (and by extension, Connie), Jasper, Lapis, and Garnet are all figures of import to the rebellions and if they spoke authoritatively about what should be done and how, a not inconsequential number of rebels would listen.

Steven's statement causes harm to both factions, as well as causing a number of their members to turn their back on Earth. While Bismuth isn't hurt emotionally --she had her break from the group already-- it does hurt her standing in her own revolution. A consequence is that she begins to find it harder to reign in some of the more radical elements of her own movement.

### Your New Best Friend

Before the snafu can be properly smoothed over, a fleet arrives heading for Earth that doesn't belong to the Diamonds or either rebel faction. No, it's Spinel and her splinter faction, who are mainly united around being royally pissed off at everyone (Diamonds and Citrine both) and wanting to see them suffer for it.

Part of the fleet tries to blow up the space station that's being used for diplomatic talks since Yellow Diamond (and Peridot) is onboard. The station _IS_ knocked into freefall and would crash catastrophically into the Earth, however, Peridot and Yellow Diamond are able to get the station to land more-or-less safely in the ocean through a combination of Peridot's technical brilliance --allowing her to MacGyver a solution-- and Yellow Diamond refining the idea (she's no idiot herself) then providing most of the raw power needed to make it work.

Spinel, meanwhile, shows up with her injector doomsday weapon from the movie, landing it atop Lighthouse Park and everything. This is almost immediately noped by Terra, the injector removed and destroyed before it can cause widespread harm.

Spinel knew from P2's broadcast and the information floating around the Gempire that most of Pink Diamond was in Terra. However, she thought Pink had been coerced or simply too hopeless to accept any other fate. More than that, though, Spinel wasn't of a mindset to accept Pink Diamond moving on without turning Citrine/Connie into a crater and smacking her Diamond sisters around for ruining her life. Spinel, in other words, wants revenge for Pink Diamond even if Pink Diamond may no longer feel the same.

And confronted with this, Terra takes Spinel away, retreating to her hollow so the two can have a long-overdue conversation.

The points are eventually driven home that:  
1) Pink Diamond has, in her way, moved on/is moving forward and Spinel should do the same, and  
2) While Spinel is welcomed to visit Terra on occasion, she can't stay with her full-time. Terra is far more than just Pink Diamond and besides, it's hard to focus on visitors and do the intensive introspection needed to find compatible shards to release as Mended.

This looses Spinel on Earth, the gem doing a brief apology tour with the main cast and then showing up as a recurring character while she has her own 'getting my head on straight' arc in the background. I never had any firm plans for what this'd be specifically; rather it was just a placeholder/excuse for me to do side stories with Spinel popping by to interact with Connie or Amethyst or P3 or whoever.

### One Door Opens, Another Gets Kicked In

It's an open question whether Yellow Diamond would have survived the station crash without Peridot's help (just how tough the Diamonds are is, for obvious reasons, not something that ever got rigorously tested in the Gempire), but it's certain that Peridot put her own life at risk (she could have used metallokinesis to get herself to safety) to save the station and everyone on it, Yellow Diamond included. Plus, Yellow Diamond has grown to respect Peridot more over their negotiations, a fact which was galvanized through this shared near-disaster.

That combined with Blue Diamond's mounting conviction that she and Yellow really did drive Pink to despair means that the Diamonds are convinced to start making changes: with their stance towards Earth and within Homeworld.

The first is that a separate sector is made to receive the Homeworld-loyalists on Earth. The Restored won't be allowed to integrate into the rest of Homeworld society yet, but they'll be brought back into the fold all the same… which is a relief for _everyone:_ the Restored in question, the Diamonds, and most especially the people on Earth trying to keep the unruly polity from rioting.

The second is that 'non-violent nonconformists' (e.g. off-colors, 'fusion deviants' [the Diamonds' words, not Earth's], gems who refuse their assigned role) will be allowed the choice of immigrating to Earth in lieu of the traditional punishments. Also, any prisoners from the time of the Earth rebellion (i.e. Era-1 rebels who were captured by Homeworld and remain embedded to this day) will be released back to Earth, an initiative both Connie and Pearl had been pushing for emphatically.

Finally, a trade station will be built where commerce between Earth and the Diamond Authority can happen with open sanction. This will include the stuff you'd expect (Era-3 tech from Earth, parts and raw materials from Homeworld) as well as stuff you wouldn't (human 'luxury items' will be available, including food [Yellow Diamond has acquired a taste for liquorice] and select pieces of human media [Peridot argued long and hard to get _CPH_ added explicitly to that list]).

A Big Donut will be opened on the station (the company having been riding it's gem-associated fame for all it's worth): Sadie will be there for the opening ceremony but both she and Lars loudly declined working there full-time.

HOWEVER, what the Diamonds come back to after their extended visit to Earth is the Gempire in distress: Bismuth's revolution has forced the blockade back, claiming several more systems in the process (including one or two particularly important/valuable ones), and swaths of Homeworld space are crippled by sabotage and conflicting orders as the Rose Buds wage their war of espionage and propaganda.

The revolutionaries have in places descended into full French Revolution-esque purgings, with gems not of sufficient revolutionary spirit being shattered alongside the ones overtly aligned with the Diamond authority. This is a result of Bismuth losing control of her own movement, or at least some of the more radical elements within it. Bismuth, for all her willingness to shatter, was always quick to make exceptions for non-combatants, as well as having a live-and-let-live attitude towards gems who didn't share her convictions. These radicalists, however, have a harsher, 'join or die' mentality and are leaving quite the body count (shard count?) in their wake.

Yellow Diamond tackles the subterfuge angle, clearing up lines of communication and giving unambiguous orders, all while mobilizing forces to find and remove the Rose Buds agents in their midst. She's an administrator and this is an empire in dire need of administration.

Blue Diamond makes Yellow swear that once this crisis is dealt with, they'll confront White Diamond about what they did to Pink and how they need to reevaluate Pink's own advice to them (i.e. reconsider the reforms Pink Diamond proposed that were subsequently dismissed). She then heads out to lead their blockade forces and confront the revolutionaries: if there's anyone who can stop an angry mob cold, it's Blue Diamond.

### Exterminatus

Blue Diamond warps away to join the blockade and... vanishes.

Yellow Diamond has herself sequestered, fully focused on thwarting the Rose Buds and no one has the authority to intrude on her. And since Blue Diamond isn't there to call in and interrupt, it takes a while before someone from the blockade is able and willing to force the matter: Blue Diamond is gone and, given the weapons used widely by the revolutionaries, presumed shattered.

Yellow Diamond takes this... poorly, mobilizing the full military resources of the empire to see the revolutionaries scoured from existence even if her fleet has to go to each and every Revolution-controlled station or planet and bombard them into slag.

### ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

At this point I'm really unsure of the particulars. I could see Yellow Diamond and Bismuth mutually destroying one another in some pitched conflict. Or the atrocities happening between the revolutionaries and Yellow's forces get so bad that Earth feels compelled to intervene. Or, with BD gone and YD on the warpath, the Rose Buds attempt some kind of takeover.

Whatever the case, this is when White Diamond finally comes out as the final boss of the series. She's been conspicuously absent so far, grieving Pink Diamond's shattering in her own, alien-yet-not-at-all-healthy way, but things have finally gotten so far gone that Big Momma White is coming out to clean up the mess her unruly children have been making.

Back on Earth, White Pearl shows up at the trade station and calmly informs them that trade is over, all former deals are off, and, "I'll be having a word with Pink soon." Then all communication and activity from Homeworld just... stops.

White is an absolutist: there's right and wrong, black and white. And both are defined as being _strictly aligned_ with her... or not and being forcibly brought back into the fold, complete with a new, paler look to go with it. Gems are assimilated and the Gempire is wrenched back from the brink by sheer _force majeure_ , both rebellion factions crushed or scattered in mere months.

Finally White Diamond's fleet arrives at Earth and we get some kind of _Change Your Mind_ -esque clash involving the OG Crystal Gems and Terra confronting White Diamond in all her terrible majesty. And... I honestly have no idea how it ends, whether WD learns and repents like in the show or if she's destroyed or driven off, as well as how large the price is to the Earth to accomplish it.

There'd certainly be something about Terra resisting White's assimilation effect given that she's a union of _so many_ personalities, not a single voice but a chorus of thousands.

As you may have guessed, Blue Diamond fell into the 'warp redirect' trap Rose had originally planned, the matriarch arriving on some desolate asteroid in the middle of nowhere only for the warp pad she arrived on to immediately detonate. Despite the revolutionaries taking the blame for it, it was the Rose Buds who removed BD from the picture.

All of this leaves open her being found (or managing her own rescue somehow) and returning to find a Diamond Authority in ruin and possibly (depending on YD and WD's fates) without any other Diamonds.

Since BD had been on a road to, if not redemption then at least repentance, there could be a happy ending of sorts where BD gets the Gempire straightened out and made more humane, cementing both the reforms PD had so long ago sought to achieve as well as peace and cooperation with Earth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Had Episodes 41+ actually happened, they'd certainly differed from all of this in places as my co-creators' and my ideas for what to do next shifted and evolved. After all, it happened plenty while Connie Swap was being written. And I'll be showing some of these unused ideas, places in the Ep1-Ep40 stretch where we once thought to do X but later did Y instead. You can look forward to that no later than next Wednesday, though I'm hoping to have it up sooner.


	7. Unused Ideas and Art

Most of the broad arc of Connie Swap was planned back in early and mid-2017. We have a brainstorming document which contained the ideas that solidified in our team chats spelling out all sorts of future events months or even years before the fic would reach that point. Case in point, here's a peek at that document now:

The New Lars episode wouldn't go up until November of 2018, to show how far afield some of these plans were in the making. And the other takeaway from that screen shot is how there's a lot of ideas there that ultimately didn't happen (Citrine never influenced Bismuth. And Connie in space with Eyeball? What?!), my co-creators and I settling on a different path of events we liked better or felt was more in-character than what we originally had.

It's some of these cutting room ideas I plan to talk about here. They're not really deleted scenes so much as scenes that were never created in the first place, belonging to an alternate version of Connie Swap. Most of these are centered on or around Rose's invasion of Earth because that was originally planned to happen sooner in the fic's timeline, back before our main cast had had so much character growth, before they'd transcended so many of their initial character flaws.

### Connie and Rose's Conversation Onboard the Handship

There's a scene in Ep35 where Pearl has led Connie to Rose so the two can have a civil conversation. And rather than being an obvious bad guy, Rose tries to portray herself as sympathetic, having to maintain a guise of ruthlessness in front of Homeworld gems like P2 but being far friendlier in private.

And Connie starts to open to Rose but then catches herself, realizing that this is the same gem who had, only hours ago, methodically savaged her family and hauled them all aboard her _warship_ as captives. So maaaybe she shouldn't be so quick to accept this friendly demeanor as sincere.

That's what actually happened in the fic, but in an alternate version of the scene, we originally had Connie being much more guileless in her dealings with Rose, accepting the offered hand of friendship more openly.

> MJ: i think it would be a great spot to have her come across nice and almost sympathetic  
>  make connie think maybe there is something there to help?
> 
> br42:  
>  Rose: "Wait, so Citrine, grand leader of the Rebellion, is gone?"
> 
> Connie: "Maybe. Why?"
> 
> R: "Well, that changes everything, dear. You didn't wage a war on Homeworld, now did you?"
> 
> C: "N-no."
> 
> R: "And the Diamonds were never concerned with Citrine's last few followers. A Jasper, a Lapis, and an era-2 Peridot? They'd be ground into gravel without a second thought, but only because that's their way."
> 
> C: "Wait, so... if I confirm that Mom's... gone, then we can all just go home? You'll let us go?"
> 
> R: "It's never that simple, my lovely. There are reports to deliver out; debriefings to be had. But I'm the one here. If I tell them that Citrine is no more, and she's not... right?"
> 
> C: [curls up] "No, she's not. It's... it's just me."
> 
> R: "Well then, I can tell them quite honestly that we're done here. I'll say something about the surviving traitors hiding and not being worth our time, which is true enough."
> 
> C: "Oh... um, thank you. This is not at all what I expected, especially after everything I'd heard about you."
> 
> R: [sighs] "I can't say I'm surprised. I didn't exactly part with the others on the best of terms. I doubt I'd have been any better."
> 
> ...the two talk, Rose seeming nice and kind of resigned. Then, when she's got what she wants from Connie, she's shrugs and is like, "Well, this is all for the Zircon's to sort out. Though I do look forward to watching the eventual executions. Ta!"
> 
> And walks off while Connie freaks out.
> 
> MJ: lol  
>  so Rose is almost pulling her leg
> 
> br42:  
>  Yeah. That's the part of the point of her: she's empathetic, supernaturally so, and yet completely conceited. She has charisma and cunning to spare, so she will befriend and flatter and lie for precisely as long as she needs/wants to. Then she'll be sure you know it was all a facade because she savors the victory all the more that way.
> 
> She genuinely is curious about a lot of stuff she has to talk about with Connie, and she'll say a lot of things, some of which might actually be true, to get her and Connie to discuss it all. But once Rose has what she wants, Connie is, at best, another prisoner.
> 
> And at worst, a plaything.
> 
> MJ:  
>  R: “So, What’s it like?”
> 
> C: “What’s what like??”
> 
> R: “Being part human?”
> 
> C: “Uh, its okay?”
> 
> R: “If I had a daughter, I would have named her Nora.”
> 
> C: scrunches nose at the name

### Food Fight

After the handship crashed to Earth and Rose and Pearl were loose to cause havoc for our heroes, the plan was for Rose's reign of terror to be a lot longer and, frankly, more Saturday morning cartoon villian-esque. [grimace]

However, we have a commitment to our characters being competent by default (protagonists and antagonists both) and frankly several of these hijinks seemed trite for a wildly-powerful invader stranded on a hostile world.

The first such idea was that Rose would sneak over to Peridot's garden and _tamper_ with the produce there.

> Jasper and Peridot are unloading boxes of produce from the warp pad. These are then piled into a corner and left alone for a couple chapters or episodes, mentioned but only as a background detail.
> 
> It's during this time that some _stuff_ starts happening around the Beach House when no one's home: things are moved or knocked over and Connie finds books scattered about. There's also a single warp out from the Beach House logged that defies ready explanation. This is initially chalked up to a malfunctioning robonoid. But then one day Peridot prepares to make a lunch using the new produce.
> 
> After a fruitless search for Connie's warp whistle (Connie: I swear I left it on my bedside shelf.), Connie and Lapis are talking in the living room, Jasper reading in her spot on the couch, and Connie's unloading some worries she has about Doug's new girlfriend, Priyanka. And Lapis wings over to the kitchen, swiping an apple Peridot was just about to slice up (Peridot: Hey!) and hands it to Connie.
> 
> Lapis: An apple a day keeps the doctor away, right? Eat up, girlie, and maybe it'll mean fewer house calls in the future.
> 
> Connie is about to take a bite... and is promptly kicked in the face. The apple has sprouted cartoonish little hands and feet and doesn't care one bit for being chomped. At that same moment, a bunch of the produce in the kitchen come to life, grabbing cookware and attacking Peridot en masse, an attack that is more surprising than actually dangerous... though there's an onion with a knife that is being every bit the terror the Beach City resident of the same name would be.
> 
> The boxes of produce topple over, maybe one plant in three rising up to join the scrum, a slapstick invasion taking place. This would mostly be played for laughs as Lapis' banter is 90% food puns, Jasper takes to making bare-knuckle apple sauce and vegetable purée, Peridot is being buried under produce like canon!Garnet was under Watermelon Stevens, and Connie is fencing with that onion, saber vs. kitchen knife (and crying more with every slice she lands against it).
> 
> After the food fight is over, the group realizes that Rose animated some of the plants from the garden and that those must have been responsible for some of the vandalism taking place in the Beach House. It was almost as if the plants had been looking for something... but what?
> 
> A consequence of this is that they have to stop gathering food from Peridot's garden since they have no idea how many other hidden animated flora lurks there. At first the impact of this change in foodstuff is negligible but will have more of an impact on Connie as Rose's guerilla warfare campaign continues (this'll be discussed more in another section).
> 
> Another consequence is that one of Rose's minions swiped Connie's warp whistle, which'd matter later as well, Pearl using it to make more and then using them in conjunction with a bunch of holo-pearls warping about to distract the CGs when Rose and Pearl finally DO make their warp-based attack.

This scene never took place, obviously, but there was a tiny nod to it back in Ep36Ch7 with:

> "I cannot visit the temple, the Kindergartens, the Galaxy Warp-"
> 
> Rose sighed. "Yes, that would have been too much to hope for."
> 
> "-as well Peridot's garden and a collection of warp pads stretching from the Prime Kindergarten to the Great North."
> 
> The corner of her Rose's mouth curled down, a sight which pained Pearl slightly. "And I had such plans after my dear Pearl told me about that garden."

And the 'hide Pearl and Rose's warp inside the noise of a BUNCH of fake warps' was done in the fic when Pearl had every warp pad activate concurrently, rather than the aforementioned warp whistle-minion ploy.

### Psychological Toll

As mentioned before, the original plan was for Rose's conflict with the CGs to be stretched out, a long-running game of cat and mouse as Rose dipped into her many, powerful, and diverse magical talents to harrass the CGs --attempting to soften them up for a later confrontation-- and Pearl managed to MacGyver gadget after gadget at her owner's behest.

A quick aside is that in this version of events, the CGs would still have a lot more of their Pearl-bias intact while all this was going on. As a result, they'd consistently misattribute the clever tools and cobbled-together trumps Rose was using to Rose herself, a subplot meant to steadily and quietly build up Pearl's accomplishments for her own, later 'becoming my own gem' arc.

Below is a little snippet of some dialogue on that:

> P: Gnyaaa! How does a Quartz know so much about gem-tech?! [points to Jasper] Aren't you suppose to be the pinnacle of your mineral's classification? Why aren't you a genius saboteur, too, instead of just a pile of scowling muscles?!
> 
> J: (clenches fists, scowls)
> 
> P: Yes, that! Be less that!

Anyway, the idea was that as time went on, things in Connie's life would grow more and more restrictive as the CGs had to be ever more on guard for Rose's attacks, a fact which would be causing the girl more and more grief as time went on.

After an ambush by Rose on the outskirts of town, Connie is forced to go out with gem supervision. This would happen around the same time Connie and Steven were fusing in secret, shutting down that exciting activity (and sorely needed source of stress relief) completely. This would annoy _the heck_ out of Connie, and lead to some 'teenager friction at home' shenanigans, the sort we got to see a little bit of instead while Connie was grounded in Ep33.

Furthermore, the gems would realize that Rose has been using 'sleeper agents' --that is to say, possessing people around town and having them spy on the group or engage in acts of sabotage-- which forces them to sharply reduce the amount of socializing they do outside the Beach House, with the few humans that do visit (e.g. Steven, Doug, Jamie or Barbara dropping off mail) being subjected to a battery of questions each time to make sure they're really who they say they are.

This would further cause frustration in the group, Connie most of all, and tempers would rise as time went on.

And there's the sabotage of Peridot's garden too, which has changed the sort of food being prepared for Connie for the first time in her life. This wasn't something Connie was expecting to bother her at first, but it's one of those staples of her life, a source of constancy that has been removed that the girl finds progressively harder and harder to ignore.

As I said earlier, this approach got dropped because it didn't really fit the fearsomely competent invader Rose Quartz was meant to be. Frankly, we had to contrive a number of reasons in the main fic for Rose to wait (e.g. her lying low thinking Garnet was her double agent, her being catatonic after possessing Steven and getting whammied by Connie) so that things wouldn't escalate before we'd had a chance to tell the stories we wanted to tell.

Also, a lot of the subplots this tied into (teenage rebellion, underestimating Pearls, Connie chafing under supervision) were all ones we visited in episodes elsewhere. But all of this frustration, the stress and annoyance and fear bearing down on the group was meant to segue into...

### Dueling Quartzes

Rose has been locked out of the warp network for a while now but finding ways to torment the CGs regardless, things are tense at home, and then an obviously possessed Sour Cream shows up to deliver an invitation: Rose is offering a best-three-out-of-five series of duels against Jasper. If Jasper wins then Rose will surrender (Rose: If you poof me a third time then you can just bubble me outright.). If Rose wins then Jasper will have to bow out of the rest of the hunt for Rose, effectively benching the warrior.

The others are variously wary (Lapis: If you gave me your word in a sack, I'd have an empty sack.) and dismissive (Peridot: We have the home advantage, with resources and time on our side. We stand to lose more than we gain in such a gamble.). However, Jasper, who has been growing increasingly frustrated at both life at home and her continued failure to catch Rose Quartz, agrees over the objections of the others.

The duels are to be 'to poofing or to ring out' and a 'nothing but your gem' affair (no swords, no equipment, no minions, only your fists, your powers, and what you can summon), each duel to be at a different location chosen randomly so there's less chance of it being a trap. Rose will be granted a one-time warp access for each so she can reach the site of the duels. Rose and Jasper will each bring a witness and a recording device to make sure there's no foul play and that the results are honored. Since Rose declares that Pearl will be her witness, Connie agrees to be Jasper's, largely because she wants to see Pearl again (and maybe even talk her into leaving Rose's side).

When Connie and Jasper warp over for the first duel, they find Pearl there holding a conspicuous, blocky device. It's her recording device, one cobbled together but functional as Pearl demonstrates it by filming and then replaying Connie and Jasper warping over and approaching them.

That established, Pearl uses a bag of sand to mark a wide circle on the ground for the duel, Connie confirms there's nothing suspicious nor that either fighter has anything hidden on them, and the fight can commence.

What follows is less a pitched brawl and more Rose dancing around while unloading millenia-worth of dirty laundry on Jasper, Rose goading Jasper into a mistake. Given how tight-lipped Jasper can be, this was meant to be where a lot of Jasper's backstory (and the character flaws shown therein) were revealed: her turning on her Diamond, her taking Citrine as a Diamond-replacement, her pining after Citrine and ultimately going unrequited.

In contrast (and when there was a break in the action), we'd also have Connie and Pearl talking pleasantly with one another, it clear each of them cares for the other despite being on opposing sides. Here we'd get to have Pearl talking more about herself, as well as having the push-pull of Connie trying to talk Pearl into leaving Rose's service (concurrently trying to convince the gem that she's so much more than just a servant) while Pearl counters with talk of her affection for and dedication to Rose (as well as her strained but hidebound adherence to 'being a dutiful Pearl').

The first round is won by Rose, the gem goading Jasper into making a mistake and getting thrown out of the ring.

The next match is scheduled a week later and both parties depart.

Jasper is _furious_ and pretty much doubles down on her Jasper-ness as a result: she trains _constantly_ , patrols unrelentingly, and is stubborn to the Nth degree when the others try to approach her, either about the duel or about any of the stuff Rose blabbed about in the fight.

Then we have the second fight and Jasper comes out swinging. This would be our chance to show just how brutal a slugging match can be between these two powerhouses. It'd also let us showcase Jasper's unstoppability and tenacity in contrast with Rose's regenerative powers and cunning.

The fight goes on for _hours_ , Connie alternately tense and bored at the spectacle below. However, Jasper has had a couple of close calls, nearly getting ringed out. So when Pearl steps momentarily away to go fiddle with her recording box, Connie decides to intervene, going briefly insubstantial to induce a moment of panic in Rose so that Jasper can finish the fight.

Rose reflexively summons her bubble, then turns on Connie (who hasn't been able to return to tangibility quite yet) and shouts angrily that Citrine's tricks won't work on her again. Also, that Connie interferred and so the match is forfeited in Rose's favor.

This time Jasper is apoplectic.

Through all Rose's invasion/siege/psychological warfare, there'd been an undercurrent of Connie-Jasper solidarity, the Quartz being an island of stability and calm in the face of Peridot and Lapis' growing frustrations (and Connie's own as well). But here that's broken completely, Jasper loudly blaming Connie for losing the fight and storming off to go train more.

It's a very unpleasant week for everyone back at the Beach House while they wait for the next duel, Jasper being practically her canon self in terms of personality and pleasantness. The point is that Jasper is effectively regressing in the face of this, because she's the Perfect Quartz fighting a succession of fights against a super Quartz and the parallels to her betrayal of Pink Diamond/defection to Citrine is bringing out the worst in her. Old and deeply buried shames are rising to the fore and it's unpleasant for _everyone_.

The duel is over under a minute, Rose falling asleep within her bubble and possessing Jasper, forcing the Quartz to walk calmly outside the ring of the arena before waking back up.

Jasper's defeat is swift, total, and ignoble.

Jasper warps away, not back to the Beach House, leaving Connie there to awkwardly depart after a hasty goodbye.

With Connie gone, Rose turns to Pearl and asks if she got what she needed. It turns out that Pearl's 'recording device' was actually some sort of mechanism for analyzing the warp security measures keeping them locked out, using their one-time warp accesses to glean information each time. Pearl studies her device and says that, yes, with a couple of days, she should be able to bypass Peridot's lockout and get them warp access once more.

The duels were never actually about a contest between Rose and Jasper, they were just the pretext for Pearl to be able to warp enough times to hack the system. And Pearl asks, a touch nervously, what Rose would have done if Jasper had been winning instead.

"Why, after her second win, I wouldn't have shown up for the next duel. This is precisely the sort of trap Jasper would be unable to avoid. She's a simple creature, really, and bound by chains of her own making. I am not so fettered."

Jasper, meanwhile, is having something of a breakdown. Fighting and losing and the prospect of being benched and the parallels to her old betrayal of Pink Diamond is causing her to grapple with some personal demons she'd long locked away.

Anyway, that was the duel arc and it got cut because most of the big reveals and dirty laundry and misbehavior it brought out in Jasper were ones that ultimately got revealed bit-by-bit through episodes 12, 19, 33, and 39. Connie's oasis of calm where she tried to convince Pearl to switch sides happened in Ep38 (ditto the 'You're more than a servant' talk, though that was mostly delivered by Bismuth instead of Connie), and the 'secretly subverting the warp lockdown' shenanigans happened with Garnet the quadruple agent and Pearl's own Ep38 devices. And the whole 'Rose arranges a meeting under false pretenses, turns out to be as cunning as she is a liar' happened in the whole false truce talk of Ep36.

The duel was a fun idea but not one that worked for the characters as they were when Rose finally showed up in the fic, hence it getting cut entirely.

### Seeing Eye to Eyeball

Remember this picture?

It was drawn by MJ a looong time ago, posted to the CS Tumblr page, and wound up as a post-chapter extra in Ep35Ch6. Well, once upon a time it also gave rise to a scenario that CS ended up doing but not at all in the way it was originally planned.

See, the idea was that it'd be neat to have the CS-equivalent of _Bubbled_ , with Connie and Eyeball jettisoned into space together. But since Connie doesn't actually have a bubble, she'd have to go insubstantial, staring into Eyeball's mindscape as a means of surviving the vacuum of space.

Why was Eyeball there? How did she and Connie end up getting shot into space? Who knows! We certainly didn't -- those details were ones we'd figure out along the way. But however they got there, Connie would end up digging deeper into her Colored Perception power than ever before, ultimately digging into Eyeball's memories while the two made the long drift to Earth through reentry together.

In this, Connie would witness Eyeball's recollection of Citrine shattering Pink Diamond (really shattering Pink Diamond, not as a fake-out). The twist being that it wasn't the heroic 'savior of Earth brings low a tyrant in a clash of Good vs. Evil' but rather Citrine appearing before an embittered and defeated Pink Diamond, sidelined by her own sister Diamonds, and Pink Diamond simply allows Citrine to shatter her after delivering a couple of stinging remarks. Citrine, meanwhile, is resolute but it's clear she's also horrified at what she's there to do, the fact that she's doing it against a willing target making it all the more offputting.

Not at all the scene the YA literature-obsessed Connie had envisioned.

It was a neat and cinematic scene, plus a clear parallel to canon but with it's own CS spin to it. However, the insubstantial fall to Earth was ultimately wrapped into a third act finale for Ep35 instead. The reveal of Citrine's shattering of Pink Diamond (and how the Diamond didn't fight but rather grimly accepted her end, such was her despair) was visited a couple of times, first in Citrine's journal in Ep31, then again in Pink Diamond's 'haunts' in Ep39, and once more in Rose's flashbacks in Ep40.

There was never any reason to bring the Ruby Squad into the fic and, while the 'relive memories through another's eyes' gimmick was kinda neat from a storytelling perspective, it was a use of Connie's CP power that didn't really fit the theme of emotion viewing/manipulation, and was only being invented for that scene alone.

As someone who cares about power consistency and resisting unnecessary power creep, I was glad that this ended up falling to the wayside.

### Connie Protective Services

The plan was always for Connie to attend therapy at some point. And starting in Ep33, she did, going to sessions with Jeff's mother, Dr. Becky Brooks. And in Ep33Ch4 we had the following moment (emphasis mine):

> Dr. Brooks' mouth quirked up into an understanding smile. "The magic part is new but your specific concern isn't strange. It's not uncommon for people in stressful careers --police officers, fire fighters, soldiers, doctors-- to have reactions like what you're describing, especially if there was a traumatic experience associated with it."
> 
> There was a sharp inhalation of breath and Connie realized a moment later that it'd come from her. The launch flashed behind her eyes, her own mental shout thundering in her ears: Why won't anyone listen to me?! Why is everyone else. So. Wrong?!
> 
> If Dr. Brooks noticed she didn't act like it, casually taking a sip of her tea and **jotting a quick note on her notepad**.
> 
> Connie cupped the teacup with both hands; the warmth that was seeping through her fingers and palms felt nice, comforting. "Yeah." She meant to say more but couldn't think of what else to say and simply repeated with a nod, “Yeah.”

That note was Brooks jotting down something concerning, something I was thinking of coming back to in a subsequent omake.

So, for a while I'd had the idea that Dr. Brooks, as an outsider hearing more about Connie's trials and tribulations, would be genuinely concerned for Connie's wellbeing to the point that she considers reaching out to Child Protective Services. It's not just the danger --it's obvious Connie is no ordinary girl, or that Beach City is any kind of ordinary place-- but rather also the emotional distress Connie has been forced to endure despite and often times _because_ of the trio of gems that are raising her.

She goes to file some paperwork and is then surprised to find herself summoned to town hall. She's greeted at the door by Mayor Dewey, who says some vague pleasantries without answering any of her questions about what this is about and leads her into his office... where she finds Doug and Peridot waiting.

Mayor Dewey nods at the pair and then says that he'll just go 'canvas the constituents for an hour' and that 'no one should bother them.'

It comes out that the obtuse and unique laws surrounding Beach City include some interesting provisions regarding 'gem-related distress', enabling reconciliation between a gem and a human representative and the person who filed the complaint. Peridot is the gem representative, Doug, the human one, and Dr. Brooks, the complaint filer.

And they need to talk about Connie.

What follows is Dr. Brooks clearly and candidly laying out her concerns about Connie, containing many bitter pills for both Peri and Doug to swallow. But they do swallow 'em, accepting that at various times they and the other CGs were 'far from ideal caregivers for Connie.'

However, their rebuttal is that things really are getting better, with both more and better oversight for Connie's wellbeing. And that Connie's responsibilities are quite literally matters of life and death with global consequences and so the usual moral calculus for this sort of intervention doesn't quite apply.

They want Connie well, they want Connie happy, and they're willing to listen to Dr. Brooks and do everything they can toward that end, but they can't pull Connie out of all of this given what's at stake.

The intent behind this scene would've been to show that Connie's parents were more aware and involved in Connie's wellfare than it might have seemed, as well as to show that, yes, a trained professional would take one look at Connie's life and, even with a generous measure of perspective, still find it _very_ alarming.

However, I feel like Priyanka and Mary already covered the 'outsiders being alarmed on Connie's behalf' angle. Adding Dr. Brooks to the group would detract more than it would add, in my opinion. Also, I really didn't like the shady 'parental conspiracy' this implied. It's great that Doug and Peri are involved and willing to talk earnestly with a concerned professional, but given that those being implicated include _Doug and Peri_ , them being able to intervene like this is more than a little sketchy.

My co-creators expressed their concern about this one and, after a little thought, I agreed with 'em, letting it go.

### Unused Art

Azurite is the fusion of Lapis, Jasper, and Peridot, the CS-equivalent of Alexandrite. She was mentioned a time or two in the fic proper but never made an appearance. The reason for that is two-fold: fusion is an extremely loaded subject for those three and because their baseline strength and the strength of their two-gem fusions (i.e. Tiger's Eye, Hiddenite, Malachite) is enough for almost any situation.

Put another way, these Crystal Gems needed an entire 40-episode arc to be able to create two-gem fusions healthily, so them attempting to form Azurite would have been misguided or truly desperate. And if it's a problem _Malachite_ can't handle (e.g. an emerging Cluster, Homeworld orbital bombardment), going bigger probably won't help either.

I'll admit I was briefly tempted going into Ep40 to work in an Azurite scene. However, I thought it was telling and appropriate that the fusion finale for these three was instead Hiddenite, Malachite, Asmi, and Sunset Aura Quartz. Adding Azurite to the mix would have diminished the personal weight of the two-gem fusions that did show up.

I should also add that this is the original design, drawn by MJ in March of 2017. All of our fusions had a reimagining somewhere between original concept and final version. Also, Azurite's form is based on Ep1 Lapis, Jasper, and Peridot; if they _had_ formed in Ep40, we'd likely have needed to update the model to reflect their own changed appearances as well.

For further context, here's a fusion height chart:

That was before we had an official CS version of Malachite and when we were still using the old, two-headed design for Tiger's Eye.

The last fusion I have to share is Tanzanite, the combination of Sunstone and Moonstone: two of our OCs first introduced in _Escape from Homeworld_ before reappearing on Bismuth's crew here in CS Future.

As a reminder, here's Sunstone and Moonstone separately:

And here's them together as Tanzanite:

And lastly I have some art that showed up on the Connie Swap Tumblr blog but never (that I can recall) made it into the fic proper or even a post-chapter section.

Here we have Peridot’s Room, designed and drawn by MJ:

And here's Lapis' room as well:

Then there's a fun little number entitled _Lapis Hip-Hop Dance_ :

And then an old one of Lapis and Jasper back in their Rebellion days entitled _One-Sided Water Fight_. The Rebellion-era uniforms are extremely old-concept, by the way, predating even Ep2 going up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All art above was drawn by MjStudioArts.
> 
> That's it. That's all I have and so, at last, we come to the very end of Connie Swap Future. If you've read this far then you've read a heckuva lot to get here and I thank you for taking that journey. I hope you've found these glimpses at the hypothetical, unwritten future of the fic to be interesting as well as to offer some closure for any of you wondering about what Ep41+ would have held.
> 
> And now I'm officially able to focus on [Amalgam](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16775092/chapters/39363619), which I hope you'll consider joining me for as well. I hope to have the official story started there in a month or less.
> 
> **Edit from the future:[Amalgam is up and can be found here!](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1800940)**
> 
> Bye!


End file.
